Someone Else's Story
by Andi Horton
Summary: Nobody knew for sure how Lord Bar succeeded in kidnapping Cor, but somebody suspected. When Cor and Aravis discover this, they take it upon themselves to investigate.
1. Exposition

Someone Else's Story

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"I suppose Aslan would say that was part of someone else's story."

~ _The Horse and His Boy_

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"Do you want these, Cor?"

Cor sat on a low stool with a book that he could not read open on his lap. Although most of the words in the book were beyond him, he was wholeheartedly admiring the beautiful illustrations in the text and so it took a repetition of the question —and a sharp elbow driven into his side by his brother— before he looked up at Queen Susan, who stood nearby. Susan held in one hand a leather-bound volume, and Cor looked at it in some bewilderment until the queen elaborated.

"It's something that belonged to your mother," she said. "There are six more of them, in fact; your father gave them to me after . . . a while ago." She traced one hand over the cover of the book she held. "She kept them as . . . well, as commonplace books, I think, and sort of a record of her thoughts. Your father felt they were too precious to be rid of, yet he found he could not bear the sight of them for some time after her passing. He asked if I might keep them until such a time as Corin was old enough to want them, but," and she smiled with fond exasperation on Corin, who squirmed and made faces at the sight, "Corin assures me that he is not yet old enough. I wondered if you might be."

"But," said Cor, much confused, "we are the same age."

"Yes," Susan said, and her smile was now so gentle and without mockery or amusement of any sort that if you had seen her at that moment you could not have helped but love her, "but sometimes age has very little to do with how old one is. Doesn't it, Lucy?" she added, and Queen Lucy, for her answer, looked up from her own book long enough to throw a cushion at Queen Susan.

"Oh. I see," said Cor, as Queen Susan calmly plucked a feather from her hair and tucked it back into the cushion. He looked at the book his hostess held and found, to his surprise, that he actually did wonder what it contained. He had not actually thought a great deal about his mother since he had first arrived in Archenland; it had been such a strange and wonderful thing to find he had a father and brother and brand new home that he hadn't really had much time to consider the woman who must once have been as much a part of their family as much as he himself now was.

"I . . . I believe I should like it very much," he said, "only . . ." he squirmed, deeply embarrassed, and wondered how to put it. Corin, who was not much bothered when it came to the exact right way to say things, took it upon himself to speak for his brother.

"He can't read yet," Corin announced. "He never learned." And he cast an envious glance at Cor, who had managed for years to elude that terrible thing, Education, which had been forced on Corin from such an early age.

"Why, that's quite all right," Susan said. "You may take them with you until you are able to read them."

"Oh," Cor said, "oh, I don't know if I had better. After all, Father gave them to you—"

"Only to hold," Susan corrected. "Not to keep. It is only my privilege to keep these until somebody with better claim on them than I finds that he has need of them. I have not even read them, for I cannot think that they are mine to read; I did not know your mother for so very long, you see."

"You can't have known her any less than I did." Cor spoke with more than a little vexation and then looked surprised that such words had even been in his head, much less come out of his mouth. Queen Susan looked a little surprised too, but covered it quickly and said of course the choice was Cor's.

"I will certainly keep them safe for you both as long as you wish," she said, "and when either you or Corin are ready for them, you have but to ask."

Cor nodded, knowing this was the best choice, and yet . . . he followed Queen Susan's hand as she carefully restored the book to its former place with its fellows, bound them all once more in a heavy leather cord tied fastened with a brass bauble, and placed the entire parcel in a cedar box which she then replaced on the shelf. He knew it was foolishness to want a book he couldn't even read, and yet that didn't seem to stop him wanting it. The very sight of something that had belonged to somebody who knew him before he had ever been other than what he was born to be had affected him powerfully, and he found himself wishing he had said he would take them after all.

"Well goodness," said Aravis, when he found a moment later in the day to confess this to her, "go back and say as much to Queen Susan."

"Oh," Cor was surprised, "oh but how could I? I already made it very clear that I didn't intend on taking the books until I was able to read them."

"Well," said Aravis, "_I_ can read them to you, if you would really like to begin right away. But I shouldn't think that you changing your mind would signify anyway; Queen Susan doesn't seem the type to bring up your every past resolution and fling it in your face each time you change your mind. Really, I think she's quite _nice_."

"I never said she wasn't," said poor Cor, compelling Aravis to look at Cor with much the same sort of fond exasperation that Queen Susan had shown Corin.

"I never said you did," she countered. "Goodness, Cor, must you always behave as though you expect me to attack? Come on," she caught his hand in hers and pulled him firmly in the direction of the door, "we must find Queen Susan and you shall tell her you changed your mind about having the books. It will be the simplest thing in the world."

"But— but won't she think me awfully feeble?" Cor protested, trying to pull loose from Aravis's grip only to find that she was more than a match for him.

"Feeble," said Aravis, "is what I would call the boy who changed his mind but was too scared to admit it, for fear of what people might think. Now _do_ stop being difficult, Cor; it makes things so much trickier, you know."

Cor, much abashed, swallowed the remainder of his protests and allowed himself to be towed through Cair Paravel in search of Queen Susan. She was ultimately located where Cor had left her— examining the shelves of the castle library with much care as Lucy, curled up in a particularly comfortable chair, lost herself in a particularly good book.

"Queen Susan," said Aravis, after everybody had made greetings to one another, "Cor wanted to ask if he might change his mind." And then she looked at Cor, and he realised she meant for him to clarify in what way, exactly, he wanted to change his mind. He blushed and shuffled his feet terribly, then, but at last looked up to find Queen Susan looking kindly down on him, and found he was able —if only just— to make his request.

"Might I— that is, I know I said I didn't want to, only I think that now perhaps I might . . . want to have my mother's books?"

"Why of course," Susan nodded, and promptly fetched the cedar box. "There are seven altogether, you will find. I am not sure what the order is, but I expect you will be able to work it out soon enough. Here," she presented the box to Cor, "you should take this, too, I think; the cedar has kept any number of little things from nibbling into the books over time."

Cor, dumbstruck at how easy it had been to change his mind (Arsheesh would have given him no end of a difficult time over it) accepted the box without so much as a word. Aravis took it upon herself to communicate Cor's gratitude, and Susan, watching the odd little team, nodded ever so solemnly and said of course they were most welcome. Then Aravis excused them both and hustled Cor out of the library, and proved just how much she had improved herself by not saying anything cutting about his performance as only a few weeks ago she might have done.

Cor, still rather dazed, clutched the box to his chest and let Aravis seek out a spot in which they might read them. He followed her downstairs and outside, into a quiet, walled-in garden that looked like it might protect them from intrusion for some little while, at least. Aravis arranged herself neatly on a low bench, and Cor understood, after a minute, that she meant for him to sit beside her and put the box between them so they might sort the books.

("It would be so much easier if you had _said_ so, Aravis!"

"I had thought it so obvious that I needn't bother; honestly, Cor, won't you just _sit_?")

With the box settled and opened between them, Cor dared to reach in and lift out the bundle of books. They were bound with the leather cord he had seen Susan tie round them; the brass bauble at one end of the cord was stamped with the shape of a flower, and Aravis traced her fingers over this as she untied the cord, and Cor dared to lift the topmost volume. It was as soft to the touch as it had looked when Queen Susan held it, bound in dark green, somewhat spotted, leather. Cor turned the thing over in his hands and marvelled at it. His mother, whom he did not remember in the least, had held this in her hand and —he flipped it open— wrote in it. He studied the words, and was suddenly consumed with a desire to know what she had said. Thrusting the book at Aravis, he begged her to read it.

Aravis accepted the book, studied the page and said "it's only a housekeeping list, Cor, it—"

"I don't care," said Cor, who had never had anything in the least like a mother in his whole life, and realised that this was probably as close as he was going to get to having one (unless one counted Aravis, and Cor didn't; although he would never tell her so for the world, he secretly hoped his mother would not have been quite so _severe_) and so was suddenly desperate to hear what she had once thought. "I don't care; I mean," apologetically, "if _you_ don't want to read it, then naturally you needn't think I would force—"

"Oh, don't be so foolish," said Aravis, and began to read the list.

"Twelve bolts raw silk. Blue, green, brown, yellow and red. And—" she squinted, "she's made some sort of little symbol here beside red, I am afraid I don't know what it means." She went on. "Three bales carded wool. Two pots crimson dye. One pot green dye. Three pots blue dye. One box new needles."

It did not get very much more interesting than that for several pages, but Cor didn't care. He settled his back against a tree that was rooted firmly beside the bench and listened to Aravis read, reciting the litany of the everyday life of a woman to whom he owed his very existence and yet whose face he could not picture in his mind. Aravis had a marvellous voice for reading, very level and just low and husky enough not to grate, but loud enough so he did not have to strain to hear what she said. It was, in fact, rather a perfect voice for reading lists.

"Spring cleaning third day. Ministers' apartments and all council chambers. Begin— oh, but here's something." Aravis's eye had skipped ahead a line or two. "Physic most reassuring. Nothing to cause alarm, but still I wonder. Can it truly be normal to have . . . erm," Aravis sat up a little, "I don't think you'll want to hear this part."

"Oh, but—" Cor began. Aravis shook her head, and looked very prim.

"You do not," she said, "want to hear this part." So Cor let Aravis read on ahead a bit in her own mind, and when she came to a part she deemed decent to read aloud, she went on. "Lune is so very happy. He cannot decide if he would rather have the Crown Prince make his appearance first, or if he wants a houseful of daughters to dote upon before we finally get around to the business of giving Archenland its next King."

She looked up, then, at Cor's slight confusion and made her explanation as gently and as in as matter-of-fact a way as possible. "She was preparing to become your mother."

"Oh," said Cor, and decided he did not want Aravis to elaborate further. He resolved to ask Corin to explain it later. Aravis returned to the book.

"There's a recipe here," she observed. "To help some sort of illness, it seems. I can't tell much, though; she's drawn a lot of lines through it and made a note that it didn't work . . ."

Her eyes skimmed the pages and her mouth formed the words with exquisite care as she spoke. Cor tucked his knees up under his chin as he sat on the end of the bench, closed his eyes, and drank in every word. It was so very much what he had hoped for; buried between recipes, housekeeping lists and other sundries were glimpses into the thoughts and character of a woman readying herself to become a mother; _his_ mother.

The day drew closer to something more like night, and yet Aravis kept reading; he suspected she skipped some parts she found particularly tedious, but he wasn't very bothered by that, since he knew he could always come back to them later and read them again once he learned how to read for himself. For now, he was just grateful to Aravis for reading through two books' worth of pending motherhood and notes about which fabrics would go best in the nursery.

Things got a bit muddled when Aravis picked up the third book and it seemed for a page or two that a war had broken out during the planning of the nursery, necessitating the preparation of countless bandages. After a few pages had passed they realised she had picked up an earlier volume and so decided it might do them well to put the things in some sort of proper order. There wasn't much Cor could do as far as checking the words themselves went, but he did hold the books in the order in which Aravis placed them as she picked up each volume, flipping through it in search of clues as to its place in the set. Most of them were sorted easily enough, but one consisting purely of lists, with no personal notes whatsoever, defied categorisation and so Aravis set that aside for later. At last she had only one book left in hand; opening it near the middle she studied the page. Her eyes widened.

"Oh . . ." she breathed, and looked up. "It's the one she was writing in when you were stolen, Cor."

Cor sat forward at once. "When Lord Bar kidnapped me?"

"Yes. I only wonder where . . ." Aravis flipped back a few pages, searching for the time of the abduction itself. It seemed that Queen Lora had found great use in chronicling her mental processes during that time; there were, as far as Cor could see, judging by the arrangement of the words on the page, no lists at all, but rather page upon page of prose, a mother's heart poured out onto parchment bound in vellum.

"It's so queer," said Aravis, almost to herself, as she studied the words. "The way she's speaking of it, I can't quite . . . the way she's worded it is a little odd."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, here; in the one line she says how if only she could be certain of something she would speak out, but she doesn't want to ruin somebody's . . . I can't make out this word. It's another water-spot. Somebody's something, anyway. She doesn't want to ruin somebody's something. And yet here on the page before it, she's speaking of Lord Bar and his treachery, so I can't think what she must mean, that she doesn't want to speak out about it, for didn't you tell me that everybody knew right off it was he who had stolen you?"

"Yes, he didn't make much of a secret of it," Cor nodded. "Although nobody is quite certain how he managed it in the first place; he was allowed to stay on in Archenland after that first business with the scandal, but I don't think he was actually at court anymore. He wasn't Lord Chancellor anymore, you see, and so there was no need for him to be there. I would have to ask Father about it to be quite certain, though— I don't imagine Corin would remember Lord Bar any better than I do."

"No, likely not." Aravis fell silent then, her eyes flying over the page, reading much faster than Cor could imagine he would ever be able to. A single crease appeared between her eyes as she read. Something was clearly not sitting well with her.

"It's the most peculiar thing," she murmured, and still she read, and had Cor been even a little more confident of himself he would probably have grabbed the book from her hand and refused to give it back until she told him exactly what was going on that was so peculiar she felt compelled to read about it but not explain. Instead he contented himself to sit and watch her read, and trust that once she had enough of an explanation gathered in her own mind, she would consent to make it; and so it proved.

At last, having gone over a sizeable chunk of the book in close detail, Aravis looked up. The crease between her eyes had not departed; if anything, it had deepened.

"I don't understand it," she said. "It doesn't make sense, because— well," she laid the book on top of the box between them, "if I'm to believe it, she knew something about somebody. Or at least she suspected it, but didn't like to say because she couldn't be certain in her own mind that it was true. She seems to have been a very fair-minded woman," Aravis added, and the particularly toneless way in which she said this gave Cor to understand that she was speaking out of especially deep admiration.

"Knew something about what person, though?" Cor asked. "Lord Bar?"

"That's just the thing; she never says. I don't think it can be Lord Bar, though, because she has no qualms about naming him and yet there is certainly another person here." Aravis searched the pages, and lit on a line in particular. "Here, for example; she says that she cannot believe they had been so taken in by Lord Bar, and she blames herself for allowing such passing acquaintance and cordiality to be mistaken for fealty. But then, in the next line, she talks about what a crushing blow it would be for your father to discover that he had been mistaken so very close to his heart; that the betrayal of an oath of office, even the betrayal of a king by his subject, is one thing, but the betrayal of a dear and trusted friend is quite another."

Cor scrunched up his face and considered the implications of this juxtaposition.

"So, you think that she speaks of Lord Bar as one person, while this other person, this close and trusted friend of Father's, is another one entirely?"

"It's the only way that it can all make sense," Aravis said, and sat back to study the book with more than a little annoyance. "Well, that's difficult, then, isn't it?" she said, and looked up at Cor, who did not see in exactly what way it was difficult, chiefly because he had not read everything that Aravis had.

"I'm not sure how it's difficult," Cor said meekly. Aravis, still studying the book, shook her head.

"The problem is that this person's betrayal is one that your mother was quite consumed by as she waited for your father to chase down Lord Bar's ship. It's _possible_ that the other person was on the ship when your father took it, but I can't think it would be very likely, as she would hardly have been so worried about betraying him if he was about to be exposed as a traitor as soon as the ship was caught anyway."

She looked up at Cor, who was surprised to see that Aravis looked more than annoyed, or even confused; she actually looked quite worried.

"I don't like to say it to you," she admitted, "because I think that once I say it, it will be in your mind and then you could never get it out again. That mightn't be very good, for it may be only my fancy; I can well imagine what your mother must have felt, Cor, not wanting to say something and risk it being the wrong thing . . . but I can at least say that, if the way I am reading this is right, she knew of another traitor of some kind in the castle, and he was not somebody she expected that King Lune would find on the ship."

"Somebody who stayed behind?" Cor blinked, sitting up a little straighter. "Somebody my father trusted, who stayed—" and then the implication of it, the _full_ implication, hit him full-force. "Somebody he might _still_ trust?"

Aravis bit her lip and nodded.

"I don't _know_, mind you," she cautioned. "Your mother was right there in the middle of it and if we're to believe what she wrote, she couldn't even be sure of it herself. But she certainly spent a great deal of time writing about it; I think she was growing surer in her mind, but I don't think she ever grew quite sure enough to speak out. See, here," she flipped to a point near the middle of the book, "your father is home, by this point, and you are lost to them, and then she just stops writing. It's all lists from then on. It was only as she was expecting you and Corin, and for about a year after you were born, that she stopped writing lists, and then afterward it seems she couldn't bear to write anything _but_."

"So this," Cor held up the book for which they'd had no place, the book that was lists alone, "is probably the last one, then, isn't it?"

"Probably." Aravis looked down at the little pile of volumes in front of her, and so did Cor. They sat silent for some time before Cor ventured to speak.

"It . . . it mightn't be anything like that, of course," he said.

"No, of course," Aravis nodded quickly. "I'm almost certainly foolish to have even thought such a thing."

"Oh, no," Cor protested, "you aren't foolish at all."

Aravis grew a little flushed, and murmured that Cor was kind to say so. Then both children were quiet again a minute, and studied the book.

"It mightn't be that at all," Cor said at last, "and yet . . . it also might." He raised his gaze from the books to look at his friend, who in turn looked up at him. "It might be that somebody Father trusted went on living at court after I was stolen, and Mother never said anything because she couldn't be certain of her suspicions, and so he was never actually caught, and now he's gone on living here and nobody knows."

"Or," Aravis said, "she might have spoken out and he might have been caught as a result, or she may have spoken out and he might even have been cleared entirely, which would mean that we're being very idiotic over a bit of nothing."

"Or that, yes," Cor nodded, and they both looked at the book again. "If," Cor reflected, "Mother spoke out and simply didn't write it down, it would be the easiest thing in the world to check."

"Yes, that's so," Aravis agreed. "We need only ask any of the court who have come here with us for the hunt if anybody was exposed as a traitor after Lord Bar left, or even if anybody was suspected of being a traitor, only to be cleared afterward, and then we'll have our answer."

"And if it proves that she did speak out, we've nothing to worry about." The thought pleased Cor so much that he even smiled a little. Aravis, not nearly so optimistic, did not.

"And if it should prove that she didn't speak out?" she wondered.

Cor frowned, disliking that possibility, but he answered her anyway. "If it proves she never did speak out, then . . . _if_ she was right about this fellow being a traitor to the Crown —that's quite a leap itself, of course, since if Mother didn't dare speak out for not being certain then perhaps there wasn't actually anything to be certain about— and if _we're_ right in thinking she wrote what she did for the reasons we think she did—" for Cor was too fine a fellow to lay all blame for the conclusion on Aravis, who had, after all, only been reading at his request to begin with— "then that means that whoever she suspected might still be at court in Archenland."

"Not only that," said Aravis, "he might even be with us _here_."

I am sure she did not mean to say it in so ominous a tone, but say it she did, and the manner in which she said it was such that Cor promptly wrapped his arms around himself to shiver.

The idea of travelling in such intimate company with an unsuspected traitor will have that effect on people.

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**A.N.:** This is decidedly not what I had thought I would be doing tonight, but events seemed to conspire against me to make this what I ended up doing! I had fully intended that I would keep working on the next chapter of _Kingdoms Come_ this evening, but then everything went much differently than I had imagined it would, and so, with Heather Dale's marvellous new CD _The Green Knight_ playing in the background, I wound up with this piece. This story has been in a semi-permanent state of partially-plannedness for several months now, and it seems that it caught me up much sooner than I had meant it to; I hope that does not bode ill for finishing it, because it absolutely refused not to be begun tonight. I am not sure how many parts are left in it yet, probably at least two; I do, however, know where it needs to end up and I suppose I will just have to wait and see how long it takes to get there.

It is, in fact, a sort of tie-in for two of my fics; not only does it take place directly after "Becoming Brothers", it also deals with certain events referenced in the _Kingdoms Come_ chapter that I just posted. However it should stand quite well on its own, and even more importantly than that, it is set in a land that I did not create, featuring characters who mostly are not my creations, and so for that I must offer both apologies and homage to CS Lewis, who created them all.


	2. Rising Action

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II

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Cor sat and stared at his plate and tried very hard even to taste what was on it. It might seem a strange thing to hear that he found it so difficult to enjoy his food, as for a boy who had grown up dining on such meagre fare as was afforded him by the often-bare pantry of Arsheesh, the sort of meals there were to be had in Narnia and Archenland were usually a marvellous thing indeed. The food was always good and fresh and there was plenty of it. There was no such thing as a dish you didn't like, because somehow, everything tasted as though it were truly _meant_ to taste, so you really couldn't help but enjoy it.

Tonight there was a cold, clear soup followed by a lovely fish and lastly a fine, tasty roast rabbit surrounded by heaps of good vegetables. The wine paired with the fish was good and dry and that which had been matched to the rabbit was rich and almost sweet, and in all it made a very fine sort of meal. On any other night Cor would almost certainly have fallen on his plate with unrivalled enthusiasm, relishing every bite there was to be had. Tonight, though, it felt as if every bit of dry bread, green cheese and bony kipper he had eaten with Arsheesh (and sometimes stolen from Arsheesh, for Arsheesh often withheld food as punishment, or even as a matter of economy, and I am afraid that Cor at one time had not been above taking what was not his own) was balled up and sitting heavily in the pit of his stomach. Every time he reached for the spoon to taste the soup, each time he lifted his fork to sample the delicious fish, every chance he took to try a bite of the rabbit or select one of the many bright and lovely vegetables that garnished the hare, it was there inside his belly— that awful, gnawing thought that one of these good and merry men who gathered to sup with them might be the one his mother had suspected of treachery.

Small wonder, then, that Cor found breaking bread such a trying thing.

"Aren't you hungry?" Corin looked at his brother over the rim of their goblet; Corin had drained the thing three times that night and was well on his way to emptying it a fourth time, whereas Cor had barely managed to swallow the one small sip he had taken at the start of the meal.

"Not very, I guess," Cor mumbled, and squirmed a little in his seat.

"Well, here— pass it over, then, won't you?" Corin said. "I've already had to watch you waste the soup and the fish; I'm not about to let you send that rabbit back, too. It's the best I've had all year. You're not ill or something, are you?" He took the plate Cor passed him. "Can't think you wouldn't like this."

"No, it— I don't know. I'm just not hungry."

Corin, unburdened with a desire to interrogate when there was a good meal to eat, did not question his brother further but rather tucked happily in to his extra plate, leaving Cor to further reflection.

I cannot pretend that Cor benefited greatly from this reflection; indeed, the more he thought on the problem, the greater his discomfort became. If, Cor thought, he himself who had been at court but a few months now was so disturbed by the thought that one of these men might have been a traitor who played a part in his abduction, then what might that knowledge do to his father?

Aravis, seated on Cor's other side, had been watching her friend narrowly throughout the meal, and was far from ignorant of his unease. When at last the dessert course was brought forth (a lot of exquisite moulded pastries and sweetmeats on large platters, the sight of which would at any other time have set Cor's mouth to watering) and the musicians who had been playing quietly throughout the main courses took centre seating in the great hall, where they began to play in earnest, Aravis acted. Slipping from her chair, she caught Cor's arm in a firm grip and murmured in his ear.

"Come on," she said, "let's leave now; we'll not have another chance until after they're done, and who knows how long that will be." For their time in the Narnian court had taught them that music as bright, joyous and wonderful as Narnian music can not be bound to any programme, but rather must simply go on for as long as the musicians deem it meant to last, which is a fine thing when you wish to make merry, but rather unfortunate if you have secret counsels you are waiting to take.

Cor did briefly consider refusing Aravis's summons, but he suspected his friend would all too easily shoot down any of the excuses he thought he might give as reasons why he needed to remain seated in front of a plate his brother had emptied for him and a goblet his lips had touched but once. Wisely giving up prevarication as a lost cause before he even bothered to attempt it, Cor simply nodded to Aravis, mumbled excuses to Corin (who was too busy tucking happily into a large sugar pastry to do more than nod in reply) and allowed the girl to tug and pull at him until she had got him away from the feast-table, out of the banquet hall and into the large, empty corridor beyond.

As the sounds of eating, music and general merriment fell behind them, Aravis spoke almost as much to herself as to Cor. "Now," she said, "We might at last be able to speak in private."

"Have we really anything private to speak of?" Cor asked, and then cringed to realise that it sounded weak even to his own ears; Aravis, for her part, dropped Cor's arm and rounded on him to give him a highly contemptuous look. If Cor hadn't been so determined to avoid the gravity of the discussion he knew she meant to have, he might even have acknowledged her contempt as well deserved. Instead he simply went a bit red, and Aravis frowned.

"I don't see how you can even ask that," she lectured. "What of everything we just talked about before dinner? The things your mother wrote?"

"Oh, yes. Well . . ." Cor swallowed. "I wondered if it might not be best if we just . . . leave that be. At least for now."

"Cor," Aravis blinked, "can you really mean to tell me that you don't intend on doing anything about what we know?"

"Now, there," Cor said, "that's not true, really— I mean, we don't actually _know_ anything. We only _think_ that Mother _might_ have known something about somebody whose name we definitely _don't_ know. And I don't really know what you expect we can do with that."

"We can _begin_, at least," Aravis scowled. "Cor, when we were reading the books you seemed to agree that something might be done; that we might at least begin asking questions. At least, I thought you did; what can have changed so much since this evening?"

"Nothing," Cor said, and felt miserable. "That's just it. Actually, nothing has changed much for years since I left, and I don't _want_ anything to change; at least, not any more than it has, now that I've come back. I mean, what will happen if we do learn who Mother meant? What if he really is a wretched traitor who betrayed my family and stole me away? We'd— well, we'd have to tell Father, wouldn't we?"

"Of course," said Aravis. "We'd certainly not keep it to ourselves."

"And what then? Father would— well, I'm not really positive _what_ Father would do, but he'd surely not do nothing. And then it would be my fault. It would be _my_ fault he learned that one of his friends proved to be a kidnapper and a traitor, and that Mother had a secret from him she could never bear to tell, and that it was kept hidden all these years, and he was happy only until I came along and— and made a proper mess of everything."

It is, I think, greatly to Aravis's credit that she did not slap Cor at the conclusion of this narrative; she contented herself with merely staring at him in something that was somewhere between pity and horror— possibly even a mix of both.

"Cor," she said, "I wonder if it can be very good for you to think so much, if this is the sort of thing you end up thinking. Do you really imagine that your father would blame _you_ if he learned that his friend proved to have kidnapped you?"

"No-o, not . . . well, I don't know, do I? That's the thing, really; I don't _know_ Father, and . . . and I suppose I don't want to chance what I think I know of him on something as big as all this."

"For whatever it may be worth to you, I don't think there's any chance of any of that coming true," Aravis said. "Not that whole muddle you described, I mean. Your father strikes me as a perfectly good, reasonable sort of man; I have known enough wicked, _unreasonable_ men to know when a man is otherwise, you see. And besides that," she added, "he loves you. I can't think it would ever occur to him to blame you for being kidnapped, nor for helping him discover who, exactly, kidnapped you. I can't think it would occur to _anyone_— except, of course, to you."

Cor looked suitably abashed.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "Well—" and how much courage he needed to muster to say this, only Cor himself will likely ever know— "where do we begin?"

O0O0O0O

They began with the books. It seemed the best place to start, they agreed, principally because they had nothing else to work with. They fetched the box from Cor's room and curled up with it in an alcove set into the wall not far from the princes' door, lifting the lid to reveal the neatly-bound stack of volumes.

"Though what sort of help I can be, I'm sure I don't know," Cor said, and had he looked at all mopey or self-pitying then I do not think we could have faulted Aravis for striking him. However he looked only a very little glum and apologetic, and so Aravis simply said she would need him to keep a sort of order of everything that she read aloud to him.

"For who knows what of this may later prove important?" she pointed out. "We've no real way of knowing, and so it may very well _all_ be important to know." Then she tugged the leather cord off the books and tossed it aside so that she might open the topmost volume and begin.

I will spare you, I think, the detail of their study that night. If I thought any of it vital for you to know then of course I would say so, but in truth, it had all been read before, and they were now merely learning it better. They covered a good deal of what the Archen Queen had written as she worried over her stolen child, and they covered it with such meticulous care (or at least, Aravis did, and Cor clung to her every word as carefully as Aravis had studied them on the page) as to put many a more mature scholar to shame with their diligence. Only when both children began to yawn with almost as great a frequency as they spoke did Aravis at last set aside the book she held and press a hand to her eyes.

She found, much to her surprise, that her eyes ached; no, more than that, her whole head did. The light in the corridor was rather low, provided only by a few torches spaced along the walls, and Aravis had been labouring long to read under these less than ideal conditions. She had not noticed this strain when she and Cor had yet been consumed by their studies, but the minute she put the book aside, the whole alcove gave a swimming little shake, and for a moment Aravis fancied she could see the pretty, precise script contained within the journal written across the weary face of the writer's son.

"Perhaps that will do, for tonight," Aravis said, blinking to clear her eyes of this phenomenon. Cor yawned in full agreement. "Well— here you are, then," Aravis bound the books once more with the cord, tucking the little golden flower carefully under the strap before placing them back in the box and offering it to her friend. Cor reached to accept it, then stopped.

"There's really no point in my having them, though, is there?" he wondered. "Corin doesn't care to read them, and I can't. You might as well take them to your room with you, and keep them there. That is," he added, "if you don't mind."

"I don't mind," said Aravis. She said it very quietly, though, and in such a way as to make Cor look at her twice. She sat up very straight on the cushion that padded the alcove seat, her back quite stiff and her head held high. She cradled the box to her chest with particular care. "I'll keep them safe, Cor," she promised, and Cor was surprised.

"I know you will," he said, then yawned again, and the two children went their separate ways, Aravis down the corridor to her room and Cor in the opposite direction, back to his.

Cor hadn't realised how late they had sat up reading until he got back into his room and found that his brother had not only retired from the merriment downstairs, he had retired altogether. Corin was sprawled full-length across his bed and was snoring in a markedly determined manner.

Cor smiled at this sight but did not laugh, and just as well, too, for it wasn't very long after the older boy's head hit the pillow that he was snoring, too.

O0O0O0O

The next morning Cor slept very late, but Aravis, who'd had very thorough training in this and many other areas all throughout her earliest girlhood, did not. She rose at the same time as she did every morning, put her toilette to rights in a matter of a very few, carefully-spent minutes, and took herself directly down to the breakfast table.

A hunt breakfast is not nearly as formal an affair as you might imagine, and so not even half the Narnian court was gathered in the hall when Aravis arrived. King Edmund was present, and so was Queen Lucy. Some Narnian noblemen, ladies and Beasts were on hand, as were a very few of the Archenlandish party. One Narnian gentleman, Aravis noticed, was only half-attending; he appeared to be nodding off over his poached egg. At King Edmund's kind invitation Aravis seated herself on his left and accepted a plate full of all sorts of things, some of them hot, some cold, and one thing that seemed to have landed on her plate quite by accident but was presently persuaded to take wing and look for its own breakfast elsewhere.

"And how does our little cousin find herself this morning?" Edmund wondered. "Going to join us in the hunt today, I hope?"

"Yes, thank you," Aravis nodded. "At least," she thought of the books, and all the questions she and Cor had resolved to ask, "I _mean_ to. Only Cor and I had . . . something else planned today, too." She sampled a bit of toast, found it wanted butter, and applied this with a liberal hand. Finding the result satisfactory, she chewed her next mouthful with particular enjoyment. "We'll need to see how long that takes, I suppose. But," resolutely, "I certainly do mean to hunt."

"Wonderful," King Edmund exulted. "For after you described the leopard-hunt to me that morning in Archenland, I could not from that day on think but that to chase a buck or hare would seem laughably easy to you."

"Every hunt," said Aravis thoughtfully, "can surely be said to have its own difficulties." She cast her eyes over the other people present, watching the courtiers from Archenland particularly closely. "For example," her hand moved over her plate with such practiced ease that anyone watching her would not have dreamed she was discussing anything more serious than the morning's weather, "one must spring the hounds at a different point in the chase, depending on the quarry, is it not so?"

"There is that, certainly," Queen Lucy agreed. She leaned forward a bit that she might better see around her brother to the girl who spoke. "How soon into the chase must one begin to harry a leopard?"

"Sooner than one harries a doe," Aravis said, and smiled a little. Then she resumed her careful study of the room's occupants; could one of these truly be the person of whom the Queen had written? It seemed such a fanciful thing, and yet, if a silent glade could conceal something as lethal as a feral great cat —and Aravis well knew that it could— then surely this was no less possible.

"So, too," Aravis went on, still scrutinising all those men present who had come with them from Archenland to join in the hunt, "must one be careful not to underestimate the quarry." She extended her arm and pushed up the sleeve that Queen Lucy might see —and gasp at— the long, faint lines that ran down the girl's forearm. "The mark," Aravis said, "of a lucky fool."

And she thought of the lines on her back, and how she had earned those, as well.

"My goodness," said Queen Lucy, as Aravis resumed eating, her dark eyes still rising periodically from her plate to watch their fellow diners, "I did not think that ladies in Calormen cared much for sport; may I take it, then, that I was mistaken?"

"No," Aravis said thoughtfully, "in fact you are mostly correct. I believe there are some ladies in the western provinces who delight in sport, but a Tarkheena of a civilised province is not expected to ride to the hounds or shoot or anything like that. They do not even _like_ dogs, usually, or anything that is messy or complicated or unclear. They much prefer to be idle; to arrange flowers and organise servants and receive company, and any other number of busy-looking non-accomplishments. It is thought a very fine thing, in most of Calormen," Aravis reflected, "for a Tarkheena to find for herself a Tarkaan who can provide his lady with flowers to arrange, servants to manage, and a grand home in which to receive one's company."

She speared a bit of fish with particular vigour.

"I, however," she concluded, "am a tolerable shot, a good rider, and . . . I have always liked dogs."

She was too busy sampling the fish (and finding it greatly to her liking) to notice how Queen Lucy smiled at her, or how King Edmund found it suddenly necessary to wipe at his mouth very hard with a napkin. When at last Aravis did look up again, Queen Lucy was chatting about the course the hunt was likely to take that day, and King Edmund was speculating on whether a hart or hare would first present itself to the pursuit of the hounds. Aravis listened closely to this talk and asked one or two intelligent questions, and so they made a merry little party at breakfast until at last their plates were empty, their stomachs full, and the day ahead awaited their presence.

O0O0O0O

When Cor finally found his way down to the breakfast hall, none of the people with whom Aravis had taken her meal were yet there. Like Aravis, they had all long since gone on to make the most of their morning, leaving others the luxury of coming down when sleep at last relinquished its hold on them and permitted them to rise and dine.

"Good morrow, Cor," Queen Susan, appearing as radiant and refreshed as only the wholly-rested can do, looked up from her plate to greet her guest. "Art hungry?"

"Very," said Cor, thinking with great longing of the meal he had not touched the night before. "Is there— oh, thanks awfully!" for Queen Susan had made some small gesture to a person hovering unobtrusively behind her, the result being that a laden plate was set down at her side.

"Wilt join me, I trust?" she smiled. "My brother kindly tarried as long as he could, but I did not like to keep him. Affairs of state cannot fairly be expected to yield to the demands of a late-risen queen, after all— although King Peter has always been too indulgent to say so himself."

Had anybody else said this it might have sounded grand and contrived, or sulky, or petty, or some combination of all three. When Queen Susan said it, however, you knew that she meant it exactly as she said it, and was not sorry or cross, but simply stating a fact.

"I suppose they can't," Cor said, and dug into the good food on his plate with such fervour that Susan set down her goblet and, somewhat alarmed, implored him to have a care lest he choke.

"Would hardly do for you to end your days ere this day had scarce begun," she chided him, and Cor meekly obeyed, slacking his pace to something that did not disturb the queen quite as much. "And there, now," she added, "there's a question; what do you plan to make of this day? Wilt join my brothers and sister in the chase, then?"

"Oh, don't you hunt, Queen Susan?" Cor wondered. Susan shuddered just a little, and then shook her head.

"It is not my idea of merriment," she said, and this time she did sound a trifle apologetic. "I do not care to see them fall, you see . . . I do not care to see anything fall. I so very much dislike _killing_ things. I much prefer to arrange what is to be done for all those who will return from the hunt. They make quite a mess, you know," she added, and Cor quite suddenly got the impression that he was being confided in, although what about the Queen's disclosure might be considered a particular confidence he could not have said. "It's a muddy business, hunting; Mrs Clogg and I do well to prepare for the return of a whole party of mud-splashed people and, if they have been successful, a very messy prize."

Susan looked down at her plate, and a sort of fond smile touched her face. Cor could not have known it, of course, but already the Queen was envisioning the preparations she must undertake in order to accommodate the return of a hunting party that had not yet even departed.

Queen Susan's, you see, was not the sort of purposeful domestic idleness that Aravis so despised; Queen Susan's were the preparations needed to maintain the flawless execution of every household task that, if it is done properly, will not be noticed to have been done at all. Queen Susan's parties were justly famous, it is true, but Queen Susan's household, in its day-to-day existence, was that lady's best-beloved and most noteworthy achievement— a seamless, harmonious, ever-progressing accomplishment that moved as silently, flawlessly and purposefully as clockwork, all without seeming to have been arranged at all.

Cor, who understood that he was glimpsing something private but unaware of what that something was, squirmed a little in his seat. Susan, noticing, was contrite.

"I am sorry," she said, "I don't imagine that any of this holds particular interest for you. Are you still hungry?" for Cor had nearly cleared his plate. "Would you care for anything else?"

"No, thank you," Cor said truthfully. "Although—" he and Aravis had not agreed where they would begin, but surely they had to begin _somewhere_. "I do want to ask you something."

Queen Susan gave her full attention to Cor, which of course unnerved him badly, for he was not yet accustomed to adults treating him as though he counted for anything. He was getting better at it, though, and as a result he only fumbled a very little before he managed to get the words together and out into the open.

"Did anybody— that is, after I was . . . taken, as I was, do you know if anybody else, anybody who wasn't on that ship . . . did anyone else get in trouble for it?"

Queen Susan showed her mettle by betraying almost no surprise at all. She blinked only once, very quickly, before considering the question.

"Do you know," she said, "I am afraid I couldn't say. You had already been gone for some time, you see, when King Edmund and I first journeyed to Archenland to meet your parents and your brother. And people . . . they didn't very often care to speak of what had happened to you. You were so beloved, you know, by your parents and the whole kingdom; you were so much a _part_ of them, I think, that when you were stolen away, it hurt for them to speak of you and thereby remember that a part of them was missing."

Susan here made a graceful little gesture of apology. "I don't like to put it so . . . dramatically," she murmured, "but truly, it is what I believe."

Cor, who had not previously considered himself to be such an organic part of Archenland, was rather more stunned by this revelation than he was disappointed to learn that Queen Susan could not help. He did manage to stammer his thanks, and then, with the Queen's consent, excused himself from the table.

Cor was still in a daze as he reached the door that led to the corridor beyond, but he was not so lost to his own surprise that he did not hear Queen Susan behind him issuing instructions to a newly-materialised fleet of attendants— those same attendants who had hovered, by Queen Susan's own engineering, so unobtrusively in the background all throughout the morning meal. The prince, turning to watch his hostess dispatch these persons on new errands, wondered if Queen Susan, too, kept a little book in which she meticulously recorded every bolt of silk, pot of dye and bale of carded wool she ordered for the comfort and convenience of those she loved best.

He decided, on thinking it over, that he knew better than to doubt it could be so.

O0O0O0O

"So there you are!" Aravis lit upon Cor as he emerged from the banquet hall. "Wherever have you been? I have been up an age! I have asked all sorts of people if anybody after Lord Bar and his ship's crew proved to be a traitor, and nobody can think of anyone who did. So that must mean that either your mother was mistaken in what she believed, or else the traitor was never suspected by any other than she and has gone undetected all these years."

Aravis, Cor thought, really did have a way of framing a problem quite nicely.

"I don't think," he said, "that Mother was mistaken."

"Don't you?" Aravis studied him. "Why not?"

Cor thought of Queen Susan. He thought of the books, so carefully kept, and the way his mother had fit her household, home and heart between the covers of those volumes.

"I think," he said, "that for Mother even to have been sure enough to write it down, even at all . . . she must have been very sure indeed."

He wished he could explain to Aravis why he was so certain of what he was saying now; he wished he could make her understand how the Queen who had given him the books that had started them on this quest was not only very like the sort of mother he had long wished he might have— she was also, he was quite sure, very like the sort of mother he had _already_ once had. And if Queen Susan hated to see things fall; if Queen Susan would devote her days to the careful planning and running of as great and vast a political and domestic enterprise as Cair Paravel . . .

"Mother only didn't want to speak out because she knew what it would do to Father," he said, "and in order to be willing to do that to Father, she needed . . ." what? That was what was bothering him.

"Proof?" Aravis suggested. "Some sort of . . . of tangible reason to believe that this man had done what she feared he had?"

"Maybe . . . yes, maybe," Cor thought it over, and found himself nodding vigorously. "Yes, that might have been it. P'rhaps she had overheard something, or saw something, or . . . maybe there was some reason she had to believe it was so, but she had no reason to _know_. And until she had in her hand that reason to know, she couldn't bring herself to tell Father, because she knew what it would mean for him to hear that another man he had trusted had betrayed him."

"It all sounds perfectly logical," Aravis said. "Only, if your mother couldn't even find proof at the time of your kidnapping, what hope have we of finding it after all these years?"

"I suppose we can only look," said Cor, with a bravado he did not exactly feel. "But," he added, "at least we've the advantage of surprise, don't we? For after all this time the man must surely feel quite safe; he would have no reason to suspect that anybody is looking for him _now_."

He had expected Aravis to agree with him, if only in her usual, perfunctory fashion. It therefore came as something of a surprise when she did not, but rather stood and, with wide eyes and a very small mouth, said only ". . . oh."

"Aravis?" Cor looked at her. "What is it?"

"Well," said Aravis (it was not in her nature to look sheepish, but had it been, she would have certainly done so now) "it's only what I already said; that I have been asking all over if anybody had ever been suspected of being a traitor after Lord Bar. I mean, Cor, I asked _everyone_. Narnians, human and Beast, and . . . well," apologetically, though still not sheepishly, "I also asked those members of your father's court who have accompanied us, too. Because of course, you see, I thought they would be in a position to know."

"Oh," said Cor, and saw what had so dismayed Aravis. She nodded miserably.

"Yes; I _am_ sorry, Cor. Because of course, even if he had no reason to think himself suspected _before_ . . . there's a good chance that, whoever he is, he certainly does now."

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** While my greater principles are more in keeping with Susan's pacifism, when it comes to recreational pursuits I have always been united at heart with Aravis. Indeed, from the age of ten I aspired to nothing more than mounted, armed escape from something (_anything_, really; I wasn't about to be particular) and the chance to talk about riding, shooting, and dogs with King Edmund. I have since moved on, mostly, to other aspirations, but on writing this chapter I found that those earliest ambitions had not left me altogether! I am glad that Aravis, at least, could realise hers.

So . . . the chapter titles. I have, in recent years, come to be very much against calling my chapters one, two, three, etc. but had a bit of a brain freeze when titling these. Then I realised that I had plotted this out into about five chapters, and so . . . well, Freytag was just _there_, you know? He's so handy; him, and his lovely wee pyramid. So the chapter titles for "Someone Else's Story" will, rather appropriately, follow conventional dramatic structure— and we can all just cross our fingers and pray like crazy that the story will, too, or else the chapter titles will look rather silly, won't they?

On a more prosaic note, I will be moving house over the course of the next couple weeks. You may be wholly uninterested in this bit of trivia, but huge spurts of creativity on my part always seem to coincide with a pending change of address; I am not sure why. Anyway, my goal is to keep writing as much as my schedule (which promises to be _insane_) permits, and hopefully I can keep the updates coming with something that has a sporting chance of passing for regularity.

If you'd not mind letting me know what you think of the story so far, I would be delighted to hear from you!


	3. Climax

O0O0O0O

III

O0O0O0O

If Cor had been a nasty, gloating sort of boy he might have said some very cutting things to Aravis about the gaffe she had made. It is even possible that only a few weeks ago, Aravis, in Cor's position, might have said something rather superior— she certainly would not have taken it amiss if Cor had done so even now. But Cor was a better sort of boy than that; not only did he refrain from saying anything snide, he also refused to say anything especially magnanimous, which I think you will agree shows his true worth— because of course, when you already know you have made a dreadful blunder and are deeply sorry for it, there is little that is worse than somebody who behaves so grand as to forgive you. So for his part Cor simply said "well we can only go on from here," and Aravis looked very grateful.

"The problem, though," Cor frowned, "is _how_ to go on. For if Mother had no proof of this man's guilt, then however are we to come by it? It has been so many years, and we're not even in Archenland, so I don't know how we might expect to find anything to do with the kidnapping where we are— why, I don't believe I have been in Narnia even once in my life, before now."

"Oh, but you have!" Aravis corrected him. "Didn't you say your father and mother brought you and Corin here to the Centaur?"

"That's so," Corin nodded, "I had forgotten that; they brought us twice, in fact. The first time we were only a week old, and they couldn't get through the pass to Narnia because it was all frozen over. So they brought us back later, just after the thaw, and that's when Lord Bar heard the prophecy and determined to kidnap me. I say, d'you think that Centaur might know something about all of this? I mean, him being a prophet, and all."

Aravis wasn't sure that prophets worked in quite the manner Cor seemed to think they did, but she was still rather humbled by her own mistake and so did not venture to give voice to any of her doubts on the matter. Instead she said only "I suppose he might" and was gratified to see a flush of pleasure light her friend's face. Cor wasn't often used to having bright ideas.

"So the thing now," Cor said, as they headed down the corridor, "is to learn the name of that Centaur and also where we might find him." He thought of the severe, imposing creatures with whom he had ridden to wars, and quailed ever so slightly at the thought. "I— I don't imagine one may simply walk up to a Centaur and ask him questions," he reflected. "I don't think they are the sort of person you can just walk up to at all."

"We must have an introduction, then," said Aravis. "Your father might do it, I suppose, but it would really be most fitting if it came from one of the Narnian kings or queens."

Cor, trusting Aravis's judgment as sound on this point of etiquette, nodded. "We might ask Queen Lucy," he said. "I think she would be best— Corin says that she knows _everybody_."

"Very well, then," Aravis gladly focused on the task at hand, "we will learn this Centaur's name and we will ask Queen Lucy if she knows where he might be found, and if she would be so good as to introduce us." And they smiled at each other in great delight to think that they were getting somewhere at last.

O0O0O0O

Somewhere, however, soon proved to be much more difficult to attain than they had expected. Cor and Aravis had agreed they would not ask any of the Archenlandish party the name of the Centaur, for fear of further spooking the very traitor they hoped to discover. They would have asked King Lune if he knew the name, but the King proved to be closeted with King Peter, the pair of them busy settling some minor matter of diplomacy, and so the children did not disturb them (although Aravis did look contemplatively at the door that kept them from the Kings, Cor caught her hand and quickly, rather nervously tugged her away).

"Would Corin know the Centaur's name, do you think?" Aravis wondered, and Cor said he doubted it, but supposed they could ask him anyway, just in case.

They found Corin in the stable yard with Queen Lucy, where they were conducting a thorough examination of Queen Lucy's mare. The mare, a rather alarmingly sociable golden chestnut creature, was the first to spot the newcomers; curve-tipped ears swivelled forward inquisitively and she gave a throaty wicker of welcome, alerting Lucy and Corin, who turned around.

"Why, hello!" Lucy beamed. "Good morning, Cor; how did you sleep?"

"I— very well, thank you," Cor answered. He always felt a little shy around Lucy; she had such exuberance that he found her rather daunting.

"Wonderful!" Lucy smiled. "I always have a difficult time in a strange bed; I am glad you don't."

Cor, who had spent many years sleeping on something that hardly deserved to be called a bed at all, murmured that no, the bed was very nice. Lucy said she was glad to hear it.

"But come!" Lucy added, "come, and meet my lovely girl— isn't she a treasure?" and she placed a fond hand on the neck of the mare, who tossed her head and preened just a little.

"She's Southern-bred, isn't she?" Aravis's eyes swept the horse with an expertise that Cor wished he might share. "She's wonderful."

Lucy's simple, unapologetic pride in her horse was rather affecting. She beamed at the mare and nodded. "Yes, she's Southern-bred; she was a sort of diplomatic gift, but even though the diplomacy went rather badly wrong, Peter says that I might keep her. Of course, I think that is only because he so badly wants to keep Tarva, but I don't mind _why_ I may keep her, so long as I may. Edmund and I have between us finally persuaded Peter to let me hunt from her, too— he was so worried, you see, that she might spook at the scent of blood. But we had a most terrible battle here not very long ago — which of course you must know all about — and the stable hands say she was very calm for that — at least, as calm as might be expected — so Peter agreed that she might be given a chance to prove herself at the hunt."

"I am sure she will do so admirably," Aravis said, and Cor, seeing the way his friend looked at the horse, remembered that Aravis, unlike Cor, had left behind her a home where she not only had a lovely, comfortable bed, but also stables full of horses just like this one. He felt a little ill and empty, remembering that, so he was especially grateful when Corin butted in to ask if they had just come to stare at a horse, of if they'd had some particular purpose in mind.

"Actually," Cor told his brother, "we wondered if you might know the name of that Centaur that Mother and Father took us to see— you know, the one who said that— the— the prophecy."

"No; should I do?"

"I don't imagine there's any reason you should," Cor sighed. "We'd only hoped you might."

"Have you asked one of the Centaurs here at the castle?" Lucy wanted to know. "Perhaps Greian, or Pollus? Pollus would know, if anyone would. He's just that sort of person."

"We— no," Cor said, "we hadn't. Only— can we really— that is—"

"We'd hoped you might perform an introduction," Aravis explained. "We weren't certain that a Centaur is the sort of person you can approach without one. We didn't want to get it wrong."

Lucy, who regularly made a habit of approaching people without an introduction, being quite certain that they were only friends who wanted meeting, understood that not everybody took her view of the thing. She assured her guests that she would be quite pleased to play her part in the formalities.

"Only first I must put Aravir away," she said, and so led off the prancing mare she had named for the morning star, leaving Corin to round on his brother with a question.

"What d'you care for this Centaur, anyway?"

Cor hesitated. Aravis, very brisk in her manner, said "goodness, Cor, you surely can't think it must be kept secret from _Corin_."

"No, of course not," said Cor, who really hasn't, and had only wondered if Aravis herself might think it was. So he stumbled only a little through an explanation of what he and Aravis thought they might have found in the journals, adding that they wondered if the Centaur might be able to tell them something of the man they sought. Aravis could here have corrected Cor, saying that _she_ didn't wonder this, but Cor had left out the bit about her mistake in asking everyone about a second traitor, so she thought she could be gracious enough to keep quiet on the other matter.

Corin was, predictably, intrigued.

"You mean there really might be a traitor still at court?" he demanded. "Even after all these years, he might still be here, unsuspected? But," confused, "why have you not told Father? I should have thought you would do that first thing."

"No," said Cor, and he spoke with such finality that he startled all three of them, "no, I don't want Father to know. Not until we're certain. I don't want him always to wonder— to suspect. When we tell Father, we must be certain that what we tell him is absolutely true."

"But—"

"_No_." Cor spoke with a resolve he felt sure he must have stolen from somebody else, so foreign did it seem. "If you had shown any interest in the books before, it would have been your choice when to tell him. You didn't, so now that choice is mine."

"All right," said Corin, now looking thoroughly impressed, and a little amused, "all right, so it's your choice. I didn't think it the _wrong_ choice, you know. I only meant to ask how you planned to explain making a journey to meet this Centaur, instead of going on the hunt."

"Perhaps," said Lucy, having rejoined them just in time to hear Corin speak, "you won't have to. Most of the Centaurs who don't have a duty to the Cair live in herds near the western fields. Our course today takes us very near there— I should not think it so difficult a thing to arrange that we might stop to lunch in that area." Two dimples cut deep into rosy cheeks. "Call it a Queen's privilege."

"And you think Pollus or Greian or one of the castle Centaurs might know the name of the Centaur who first made the prophecy?" Corin asked. Lucy nodded.

"Oh, yes. Especially Pollus— he knows simply everything. It's a little spooky sometimes, to be honest, but I expect that's just part of what it means to be a Centaur. You might ask him if he knows the name yourselves, if you like— he knows you, Corin."

But (Corin deferring to the wishes of his brother) all three children said they would much rather that Queen Lucy did the asking, so she assured them that she was delighted to be of service, and they returned to the castle in search of Pollus.

The aged Centaur was located easily enough in the Great Hall, along with several Archenlandish nobles and some Narnian dignitaries of varying species. All were gathered to put their names on the huntlist, a roster of those who would take part in the chase and among whom the spoils would be divided (at least, this was its stated purpose; in practice, the hunters usually found that everything got chucked into the same pot at the end of the day and they were all hungry enough that nobody really cared who was owed what).

Those who had hands to hold a quill would sign, while others would place hoof or paw in a dish of ink and press this to the parchment. Those nobles who had seals in their possession stamped them beside their names— bits of molten sealing-wax were dripped onto the list, and the seals that the men wore on rings or on leather cords or thin chains hidden in the folds of their clothing were pressed to the wax. Pollus, who had no seal, had writ his name on the paper just as Lucy entered with the children in tow. Everyone turned to bow to the Queen, who waved a cheery reply and told them to carry on. Then she beckoned to Pollus, who left the huntlist to approach.

"Madam?" he queried, straightening from a slight bow.

"Pollus, this is Prince Cor," Lucy said, indicating the slightly nervous boy, "and his good friend, and ours, the Lady Aravis. Prince Corin, you already know."

Some not-quite-nameable emotion touched Pollus's weathered, horsy face, and his lips quirked rather badly, but he only said that yes, indeed, he did know Prince Corin.

"Now, they've a question to ask and I told them I couldn't think of any better than you to answer it," Lucy explained.

"My queen honours me with her confidence," Pollus murmured. "Of course if it is within my power to be of service, I should be most pleased." Then he addressed his attention to Cor, who looked up, and up, and up farther still, until he met the eerily all-knowing gaze of the Centaur. He swallowed hard, reminded himself that he wasn't just himself any more but representing his entire kingdom, and tried not to stumble over his own words.

"We were only wondering, Sir, if you could tell us the name of another Centaur. You see Corin and I, when we were very small, were brought to Narnia to be blessed by a Centaur. He was a prophet, and he made a prophecy about me, and neither of us knows his name; I'd wanted to meet him, if I could, so we had hoped you might know who he was."

If Pollus thought the request an odd one, he did not let on. Instead he simply said "the one you seek is Oban." He regarded Cor with impressive gravity. "I was there when he spoke the words— the snow was yet on the ground when they brought you. They had tried once before to come, when you were but a week in this world, only to find that the danger posed by the icy pass and the Witch's forces barred their entrance. Thus they returned when it was at last spring, and Oban held you both, and heard the stars."

"And Oban lives with the western herds, does he?" Lucy asked. Pollus said that it was so. "Well, that's settled, then!" Lucy decided, after they had thanked Pollus for his assistance and assured him that they had no further need of his services. "When we go on the hunt this morning, we will stop to lunch by the western fields and see to it that all three of you are introduced— or, re-introduced, I suppose, for the Princes; childhood meetings are such tricky things, aren't they?"

"Oban, did you say?" They had been so caught up in their planning that they had not noticed King Lune approach. "Now it seems to me that I know that name. A Narnian lord, perhaps?"

"A Centaur, Father," Corin corrected him, and looked reproachful. "We might have asked _you_ his name, but you were busy."

"Yes, vexing thing about a kingdom, you know— it does want _running._" Lune looked amused. "But yes, Oban— that's right, he was the Centaur who told us about you, Cor; about what you would do for Archenland."

"We think," said Cor, "that we might meet him today— you know, when we're on the hunt."

"Why, that would be a fine idea," King Lune smiled. "No doubt he would be tickled to hear how what he foretold had come to pass."

Cor could not imagine that a Centaur might ever be tickled by anything, but he did not say so. Instead he simply nodded.

"But here, now!" the boys' father added, "hast put thy name to the huntlist yet?"

Corin, it proved, had put his name down early that morning when first he awoke. Aravis had also signed hers, in the hope that their investigations would not keep her from the sport, but Cor, who was unfamiliar with the workings of the hunt, had not.

"Then come!" Lune urged him. "Come, and I'll show you how, eh? That is," with a gallant bow to their hostess, Aravis and (mostly by accident of proximity) Corin, "if the ladies and your brother will excuse us."

They would and did, leaving Lune to guide Cor to the long roll on which all had made their various marks.

"First," said Lune, taking up the quill, "one signs one's name." He suited the action to the word, and Cor followed the scritchy-scratchy track of the quill with care. "Now you, my boy," he instructed, handing Cor the pen.

Cor took the quill with far greater care than you might expect a goose feather warranted. He ever-so-cautiously dipped it in the ink and drew it over the paper in the manner that his tutor had laboured to teach him. The rounded, downward-and-outward curve, the curious little loop, the plateau . . . his signature still badly wanted practice, but it had come a long way since first he had learned to make it. Cor, after signing, studied his name with some pride; his father, watching him, smiled.

"It is well done," he said gently. "And now for the seal." He reached for a little brass contraption that featured a candle burning steadily underneath a small crucible, the latter being suspended from a stand. King Lune took hold of the handle attached to the crucible, lifted it, and tipped it over the parchment to drip a bit of melted wax from its depths. Then he replaced the crucible and used the signet ring on his hand to press firmly into the wax, stamping it with the lily of Archenland.

"Is that your seal, then, Father?" Cor stared at it in wonder.

"It is my seal, Cor, and will one day be yours also; every noble family in Archenland has its own seal, you know. Here you see Arren's cup and dove— a hospitable household, that, and the seal is well-chosen. And over here is Lord Dorian's mark— very like my own, except it is a trillium flower, you know, for the family holds property on the bank of the Winding Arrow, and the fields there are filled with trillium."

"They're all different, then?" Cor studied each symbol indicated.

"They are indeed. See here is Colin's sword— now, on his standard it is set against a field, and in colour too, but for such a document the seal is sufficient. No two are alike, and so by a man's seal he may be known. Or," pointing to one at the very top of the list, a funny little mark shaped rather like a teardrop with a spike driven through it, "by a woman's seal may she be known. This is the seal of our good hostess— Queen Lucy's cordial and dagger, you know."

"Do you really know all of these by sight, then, Father?" Cor marvelled.

"I suppose I do." Lune looked thoughtful. "For they are in such constant use in the court that it becomes as easy a way to know a person as a signature, or even a face." He clapped a friendly hand to Cor's shoulder. "In time, you will find you know them too."

Cor privately wondered if this could be true; there were so _many_. And he did not even know which were Narnian and which were the seals of the nobles of Archenland. But to his father he simply nodded, and smiled, and said he hoped so.

"Now, here," King Lune tipped the crucible once more, spotting the sheet with wax just beside Cor's own name, "this one will be yours, my boy. And, as you do not yet have one of your own—" he pulled from his finger the heavy ring, placing it in Cor's hand.

Cor turned it over in his palm, staring at it. The stylised lily was striking in its simplicity— the bold central petal, flanked by two smaller. The boy slipped the ring onto his middle finger. It slid all the way down to the first knuckle, where it fit very loose. Cor swallowed.

"It's a bit big," he murmured, and King Lune smiled.

"You'll grow into it," he said. "Now, here— before the wax hardens. Make a fist — yes, just so — and press it right down. Make a sort of rolling motion if you can, or else— no, you have it. Splendid."

When Cor drew back his hand, the impression of the lily remained. It was only a very little smushed, and seemed (Cor thought) to match his signature, which was a little off-kilter as well. But both were certainly recognisable for what they were, the signature of Archenland's prince and the seal of her Royal house. Cor, staring at them, found himself caught in the grip of an emotion that was beyond his ability to name.

"It is well done," Lune smiled. Then, when Cor held out the ring, he shook his head. "Why don't you keep it?" he suggested. "At least for a little while, eh? Hold onto that until we can mint you one of your own. Practice with it. Just have a care where you use it," he added. "The royal seal is a weighty thing."

By this King Lune meant, of course, that it was an important thing and should not be used lightly, but it seemed to Cor as he held it that he could feel the weight of the seal pressing down all across his shoulders. "I'll be very careful with it, Father," he promised. King Lune, seeing the deadly earnest expression on his son's face, looked almost a little pained and sad as he rested an oh-so-gentle hand on the boy's shoulder.

"I know you will, Cor, "he said kindly. "I already know you will." Then he excused himself to go make ready for the hunt, leaving Cor to tuck the ring safely into an inner pocket of his doublet and return to his brother and their friends.

O0O0O0O

Before the hunt began, Cor had not really known what to expect. Aravis had done her level best to prepare him, relating to her friend in rich detail many tales of the great hunts in Calormen, ones that her father himself had hosted as well as those to which other Tarkaans had invited them. Aravis had only been permitted to join in a few of these hunts herself; her father had sometimes indulged her wishes to partake, and her elder brother had been her champion when she made her pleas, but she was never permitted to join when they visited other Tarkaans, nor even when Kidrash Tarkaan hosted the chase at their own home. It was apparently thought a very lowering thing for a Tarkheena to be known to hunt— judging by Aravis's expression as she reported this, she didn't care a fig for what the Tarkaans thought was lowering or otherwise.

The Tarkaans, however, did not hunt for food, but purely for sport. They pursued tiger and leopard, and fierce, wild boar— creatures which Aravis had described in such vivid detail that Cor had suffered grim nightmares about snarling beasts with cruel, chipped yellow tusks and burning red eyes. He knew that the Narnian court hunted for food to sustain them over the winter months, but over the years had made it into a sort of sport as well— a collective, collaborative chase that had a utilitarian purpose at heart, but also served the added purpose of uniting many with a common goal.

"That way," Corin had explained, when Cor asked him about it, "even if they don't catch anything, they're not too down about it, because they're all in it together, you see?"

Now, mounting a borrowed horse in the stable yard (his own pony being, apparently, ill-suited to the chase) Cor decided he ran little risk of feeling down if they did not catch anything. Aravis was at his side, exulting in the quality of the mare beneath her, and Corin, on Cor's other side, was busy testing the mettle of his own borrowed mount. Not very far off, Queen Lucy and Aravir were taking up their position by the gate; King Edmund, mounted on a fine black horse whose Southern lineage was also readily apparent in its build and bearing, was leaning over a bit to catch something his sister had just said. A smile lit his face, and Cor, looking around him at the growing population of the stable yard, found he had to smile, too.

It was only at the appearance of King Peter, tall and lordly on a red stallion, that the company at last arranged itself in something a bit closer to proper order. The High King spoke a few fitting, solemn words about the blessing of the Lion being on their chase, and asking that the hearts of the hunters might be inclined toward He who was the true master of the hunt and the lord of all Narnia. Then hunting horns were produced, a clear, sharp toot-too-roo was sounded, and in a surging sea of silken backs and flagging tails the Hound pack set off, crying their eagerness for the chase. The mounted company and Centaurs moved out next, forming a thunderous collective as hooves struck dirt and stone, their pace brisk and purposeful. At the rear ranged the great Cats, only a very few of them present but making an impressive showing all the same. These fanned out on all sides as they moved, flanking them as they rode.

Cor, who was a fine rider, did not have to worry overmuch about keeping his seat even over the rougher parts of the terrain and so soon found that the sport of the hunt was an even more wondrous thing than he had imagined. Corin, it is true, very soon forged ahead, eager to be near the front of the group, but Aravis kept her horse abreast of Cor's and the two found that their pace was not so swift as to prohibit conversation.

"We should look for a place to swim, afterward," Aravis decided, as she guided her mare around a particularly twisted root that a grouchy old Oak could not be bothered to move out of her way. Cor was surprised.

"Why?" he asked, and Aravis smiled.

"You'll soon see."

And so he did. A hunt is a very heated business, even when it is favoured by the cool breezes of autumn. The sun that day did not have the heat of a summer sun, nor even the heat of a Calormene winter sun, but it was warm and golden all the same and it made very hot work of their chase. Cor's hair soon grew damp and clung in fair tendrils all about his face. On looking over to see how Aravis fared, he saw that her thick, black hair was also fighting to escape the heavy plait in which it was bound in order to curl about her face. No hart, hare or other beast was sighted before midday, and so none of the warm, winded party minded in the least when King Peter, his brow liberally beaded with perspiration, his hair clinging to his head like a very humble, human sort of golden crown, called for a halt and a meal.

"You see?" Aravis asked. Her breathing was slightly laboured as she dismounted and loosened the saddle of her grateful mare. Cor, copying her actions, assured her that he saw, indeed.

"I don't suppose we could have a swim _now_, d'you think?" he wondered, once they had staked their horses and left them to graze.

"We'd better not," Aravis said. "There's the Centaur, after all; we'll want to find him straight away."

"I'd rather swim than eat, though," Cor reflected. "And it's not as though we would meet the Centaur before lunch is done, is it? We'll need Queen Lucy to introduce us, as you said, and she'll want to eat first I'm sure."

Aravis admitted that this was true, confessed that she also would not mind finding a place to swim, and so it was decided. As the Narnian company partook of the fine lunch which Queen Susan had arranged for them, Cor and Aravis headed a little ways off in search of a place to swim.

They found what they were looking for by following the course of a narrow river from which the hunting party had drawn their drinking water. The river ran along the edge of the field, and would eventually feed out into the great river, but before it got there it first pooled at the border of the western fields. The pool was a marvellous, inviting thing indeed, all clear and sparkling in the midday sun, so it should come as no surprise to learn that the children wasted no time in kicking off boots and removing a topmost layer of clothing or two before they plunged headlong into the water. They found it felt even better than it had looked; it was clean, cool and lovely, and very soon the heat and sweat of the hunt were forgotten in favour of simply enjoying themselves.

Aravis, after a vigorous lap or two around the pool, elected not actually to swim, but instead floated on her back, her skirts pooling out around her as she stared up at the autumn sky. She closed her eyes and let the sun bathe her face with a warmth that was now gentle and friendly, and not as loathsome as it had been when the girl was so warmed by her exercise. Cor, invigorated by the chill of the pond, chose instead to dive deep to the bottom and open his eyes that he might see what he could find. The pool was not muddy and reedy at all but rather lined with smooth stones, all of them bright and lovely colours. Tiny fish schooled above them, hunting for morsels hidden in the rocks, and the prince studied these delights for as long as his lungs would permit him to remain underwater. Only when his chest began to burn for fresh air did he at last push off the bottom and shoot up to the surface once more.

Busy as the boy was with shaking his head and shoving his hair back from his eyes, it took Cor a moment to realise that something was amiss. The first thing he saw was what wasn't there— Aravis. She no longer floated in the water beside him, but — he splashed badly, twisting around in search of her — stood on the shore of the pool, dripping wet and standing very, very still. Facing her, with terrible, dark expressions on their fearsome faces, were no fewer than ten Centaurs. They all looked very cross indeed. Cor, his stomach clenching into a very small, hard knot, swam over to the shore and waded out of the water to stand beside his friend.

"We've been swimming in their drinking water," Aravis murmured, once he had reached her. "This is their watering hole." Under the golden hue of her cheek there was a dull, deep blush. "I've apologised, of course, but— well." And she clasped her hands before her in a Calormene woman's most abject expression of contrition.

"Oh, _no_." Cor was appalled. "We're very sorry. We'd no idea. We aren't from here, you see, and— well, I'm from Archenland, I suppose, but not for a very long time, and so we hadn't any way of knowing—" but he stopped, because of course they had a way of knowing; they simply had not bothered to use it. If they had only taken the time to ask any of the Narnians, they would have soon learned better than to swim in the pool. Now Cor was blushing, too.

"We _are_ sorry," he repeated weakly.

"The sincerity of your apology we do not doubt," said the foremost Centaur, "but it does not solve the issue of the trespass on our water."

To this truth Cor could make no reply. His face hot with shame, he stood with his back straight and fought the urge to duck his head.

I do not know how the matter would have been resolved if Lucy of Narnia had not come upon the scene just then. Corin walked at her side and the two friends had been deep in a lively discussion that broke off as soon as they spotted the ten Centaurs and the two wet, sorry-looking children on the shore of the pond.

"What's all this, then?" Lucy called out. Her voice was cheery and light, but the hand she laid on Corin's arm was anything but. A well-placed hand it was, too, for the boy had been on the verge of diving right into the thick of things, with no real thought as to the imprudence of such a move.

"Your Majesty." It was again the foremost Centaur who spoke, but all of them drew back respectfully and inclined their heads to the Queen. "You are most welcome here. Your arrival is a timely one— we have a matter of boundaries that may require your impartial ruling to settle."

"I am afraid my ruling in this matter could hardly be impartial," Lucy confessed, "for these are guests in my home." She studied the dripping clothing of the children. "Oh, dear; were you swimming in the watering hole?"

"If they are guests of your Majesty," said the Centaur, "then of course the protection of the Royal house is sufficient pardon—"

"_Pardon_—!" Corin began, deeply indignant. "What, presume to pardon them for something they didn't even know—"

"_Do_ be quiet, Corin," Lucy said tersely. "This is diplomacy."

"Oh," said Corin, and fell silent. Diplomacy was not his strong suit, and well did he know it.

"Your courtesy in extending pardon to guests of Narnia is duly noted," said Lucy, sounding rather formal and not much like herself, "but I think it may be possible to make the pardon an even more personal one. You see," she stepped forward with such easy, polite surety that her approach was nothing at all like the rash entrance Corin had been about to make, "the young man is the Crown Prince of Archenland, and at his side is the Lady Aravis; it was they who this very summer past did, by virtue of their diligence and bravery in the face of many dangers, labour with two of our loyal subjects — the Talking Horses Bree and Hwin — to spare our homeland and Queen Susan from a grim threat."

Cor, who always got very red and hot about the face when this story was told, found that he did so even now, soaking wet and rather chilled though he was. Aravis, too, looked singularly stiff and was especially silent, but the Centaurs regarded the children in a much different way than they had done a moment before.

"Why then," said the foremost Centaur, "it is to them that we owe the very liberty and wellbeing of our persons; for it is true that, had we not received warning of the attack that was planned, we should very likely have lost our lives in the futile defence of our Queen."

"Indeed," said Lucy, and Cor thought she hardly looked the same person he had thought her; she stood very tall and held her head with a poise that rather awed him. Her expression, though not at all severe, was rather remote and impressive. "And it is to these that I owe the liberty of my beloved sister; therefore, not by virtue of their status as the King's guests, but rather by dint of that debt which you owe and that debt which I, your Queen, owe them too, I would entreat you to pardon them their trespasses."

And great was the children's shock that day when, as one, all ten Centaurs (who had just minutes before looked as though they might trample them into the rocks at the side of the pool) went down on their forelegs in deep, grave bows.

O0O0O0O

Once the confusion of the trespass was sorted to everyone's satisfaction, Cor and Aravis very hurriedly pulled back on those layers of clothing they had removed, covering up their wet underclothes with great difficulty and very little comfort, but considerable speed nonetheless. When this was accomplished they then had to go from one Centaur to the next, solemnly shaking the hand of each one. Each Centaur nodded very gravely to the children, and Cor and Aravis both felt very small and almost as though they must have been mistaken for people far more important than they. Only once these formalities had been completed did they both look hopefully to Lucy, who had not forgotten the reason that they wanted to find the Centaurs in the first place.

"By your leave," she said very politely, "I have another boon to beg, ere we depart."

"Our Queen can have no boons to beg; only privileges that she might claim." The Centaur who seemed to be spokesman for the herd did not appear to be flattering Lucy, but simply stating a fact. Lucy, in reply, broke into a sweet smile and thanked him. Cor, struggling to follow this exchange, could not help but feel that there were several silent conversations being had all the while the audible one was going on; he could sense an exchange of some sort, passing between the Queen and the Centaur, but he could not for the life of him understand what it might be.

"That being so," said Lucy, "I then claim the privilege of asking Oban," and here her eyes lit on one Centaur who stood further back than the others, "if he would permit me to perform an introduction of the Prince Cor and the Lady Aravis."

Oban stepped forward, his all-seeing eyes fixed steadily on the children.

"But Madam," he said, and his rich, wicker-y voice seemed to come from deep inside his chest, "an I am not mistaken, Prince Cor and I have met once already."

"You are not mistaken," Lucy agreed. She smiled encouragingly at Cor, who stared up at the great being before him, a flea-bitten Centaur whose man's beard had clearly once been black but now ran heavily to steely grey, and tried not to be alarmed. Had this person truly ever held him when he was small? Cor struggled to remember the event, but could not recall even a moment of it.

"I— I'm awfully sorry," he said, and marvelled that his voice could hold so steady and sound so clear, "but I am afraid I was so young at the time, I don't actually remember meeting you. I'm sure . . . I'm sure I'm pleased to have met you, though."

It is possible that, deep inside the recesses of the Centaur's beard, there was the hidden flicker of a smile.

"You were not pleased at the time," he reflected. "Indeed, I believe you cried."

Cor blushed. He could believe it.

"Your sire and dam were, however, most pleased with the news that I was able to share of you," Oban said softly. The strange, blue-grey eyes were now seeing something else entirely— a young mother and father, their squirming sons shared between them, as they waited to hear what the future would hold for their children. "The stars were gracious to speak, and I was privileged to report what they foretold."

"And . . . " Cor plucked up every ounce of courage he could find within himself. "And, the— the man who stole me . . . do you know anything of him?"

"The stars did not tell me of him," Oban said. He regarded Cor with a sort of solemnity that made Cor feel much less scared and much more solemn, too. "It does not come as does the information in a book or in a bard's tale. One cannot ask and be answered; one cannot go back and re-read. The gift to hear the starsong is not, as so many believe it to be, the tool of a craftsman. It is simply the privilege of hearing. The songs the stars sing are unending and ever-changing. The notes are never twice the same. It is only given to some of us, at brief moments in time, to hear the words of the song and to meet those persons about whom the stars are pleased to sing. Your deeds of this summer past, Prince of Archenland, were, on one cold night many years ago, sung of by the stars. I was privileged to hear them."

It's a funny thing, how some words can work; in fact, just as Cor heard those words spoken by Oban, for one fleeting moment it was as though the hillside and the western field and the autumn sun around him had all dropped away. The chill memory of an early spring night kissed his cheek, and a woman's breath warmed his neck. The stars above him sang a song so confusing and so very Other that it frightened him. Then the memory left him, and Aravis, at his side, had taken his hand to give an apologetic squeeze. She had not expected he would learn anything, and yet she had hoped he would

"At least," she murmured, as they walked with Lucy and Corin across the field, having thanked Oban and taken their leave of the Centaurs, "now you _know_."

Cor nodded, but in truth, he wasn't sure that knowing he wasn't able to know anything more than he had known that morning was the sort of thing that was really worth knowing at all.

O0O0O0O

The hunting party did not, that day, take any prize, but as Corin had predicted, nobody was very down about it. Indeed they were so glad to be in the company of one another that they talked and laughed and joked and even sang as they made their way back to the Cair, which by this point was ablaze with lights ready to ward off the gathering dusk.

Queen Susan, who had ordered all the torches lit, was waiting in the gateway for the party to return. At the sight of her brothers and sister approaching she at once darted away from the archway to fly down the hill, her face alight with smiles. No sooner did she reach the foremost riders than was she caught about the waist and swung, struggling and laughing, across the front of Edmund's saddle. There I am afraid she was at once made very muddy, for Edmund had fallen into more than one hole that day and was determined to share the spoils of his falls with at least one other person. Susan did not seem to mind getting covered in mud, though, and was still laughing when they reached the stable yard and a waiting groom gently handed the Queen down from her perch on the pommel.

Indeed, everybody was quite grubby in his or her own way, and all were far too hungry and tired to care much for changing clothes, so they made a very messy, informal, merry group at dinner that night. They did wash their hands first, so they did not smell quite so much of horses and dogs, but otherwise they left things well enough alone. Perhaps as a result of this informality, the party that filled the Great Hall that night was a warm, close, noisy one. Cor, caught up in that same exhilaration that had seized the group, found himself laughing a great deal and eating much more than enough to make up for his failure to eat both last night's meal and his lunch that day.

The music that night was raucous, featuring whistling pipes and thumping drums, and was the sort of music that simply _insists_ on people dancing to it, and so they did, unable to resist the call of the wild tune. Everybody got up from their seats at one point or another, all of them at some time that night twirling around in unplanned, unstructured ways that ought to have looked very poor and clumsy but instead only looked wild and abandoned and somehow a little haunting, too. The torches blazed in their sconces and the bodies of the dancers cast bewitching, twisting shadows on the high stone walls all around, so that it seemed as though there must, around some hidden corner, be Giants who also danced to the same tunes as they.

It was very late into the night (actually, almost early in the morning) when Cor and Corin finally broke away from the merrymakers, their eyelids drooping with good wine and heavy fatigue, to find their way along the corridors to their room. Aravis had departed only minutes before they had but she was already well on her way to her room, and the boys had the corridor to themselves. The sounds of the revelry followed them as they travelled down the passage, but the music was not so loud as it had been earlier, since others had already made their way to bed in anticipation of the hunt the next morning.

The princes did not immediately notice that anything was amiss when they reached their darkened room. The fire was not lit, it being such a very warm night, and the tapers were cold and dark on the walls. It occurred to Cor, when they got to the room, to cross the floor to draw the drapes and prevent their being woken too early by the exceptionally exuberant Narnian sun. He did not even get half way across the floor, however, before his foot struck something solid and he went flying, tumbling to the rushes and knocking his elbow hard against the stone floor. He cried out in pain and surprise, and Corin, exhausted though he was, had the presence of mind to nip out into the corridor, grab a torch from one of the sconces and carry it back inside to light the tapers on the walls.

As the firelight played warm, dancing yellow beams around the room, Cor struggled up from a weary heap on the ground and the boys looked around them in shock.

Wardrobes hung open, and clothing was strewn about the room. The linens from both beds had been ripped off and tossed to the rushes, and the mattresses had been shoved off the bed frames. Furniture was only half where it had been left, while the rest of it was all pulled around and knocked about— it had been a heavy oak bench, which doubled as a trunk, over which Cor had tripped. Its lid hung open and its contents were strewn about the floor, along with the contents of every other drawer and trunk in the room.

"Well," said Corin, after the boys had stood in dumb shock for nearly a minute, "_I_ didn't do it."

"I know," Cor said. He was breathing fast, and could not decide if he was frightened or furious. "I know you didn't, and I know who did, after a fashion— I only wish I knew who he _was_. I know what he was looking for, though—" and then he froze, and decided that he was frightened, for he remembered where the unfound object was and who had promised to keep it safe for him.

"Aravis," he breathed, and bolted from the room.

Corin, for his part, stared around him at the mess and then looked after his brother to call, "well, I hope you don't expect that _I'll _be tidying up!"

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** Writing this chapter brought me to unhappy realisations about the awkwardness of the timeline I was working with. I already knew and acknowledged that it was a bit off-track (and explained why it was) way back when I was writing _A Sea of Golden Sand_, but I didn't realise quite _how_ off track it was until I had to cram this story in alongside it, and found that it simply would not be crammed. So as a result, I am going to be editing a few select bits of _Kingdoms Come_ quite soon— if I don't drop dead of moving-induced exhaustion first, of course.

As ever, your insights and thoughts on this piece are shamelessly coveted. I will be so bold as to say that I am slightly pleased with it; I only hope that you are, too.


	4. Falling Action

O0O0O0O

IV

O0O0O0O

I am afraid Cor did not set a particularly fine example of Royal decorum as he ran along the corridor that led to Aravis's room. He bumped into more than one weary, bedward-bound reveller in his haste, and the last one he ran into he very nearly upended altogether. Fortunately the boy recalled himself sufficiently to at least apologise each time he collided with somebody, and even put out a hand to steady the last fellow, a nobleman from the Archen court who looked pretty badly rattled, to have so nearly missed being knocked headlong into the stone wall before him.

"Sorry," Cor said, "sorry, I didn't see you. I'm only in an awful hurry, you see, but I am very sorry!" and he was off again, rounding the final corner and coming up short against the barrier of Aravis's closed door.

Although the impetus of his headlong rush inclined Cor quite strongly toward simply throwing the door wide, self-preservation won him over and he settled for simply pounding frantically on the heavy panels. If she did not respond, yes, _then_ he might— but before he could complete the thought Aravis had opened the door to regard him with that sort of narrow stare that lets you know this had better be the sort of thing worth losing sleep over— Or Else.

Cor, who had a healthy respect for Aravis's ability to follow through on any Or Else she might care to issue, was correspondingly quick to explain himself.

"Somebody's been in our room," he said, snatching little gulps of air between his words. "Corin's and mine. It's all pulled apart. I think it must have been _him_— the one in Mother's books. I think he must know that we're looking for him. I think he must know something about the books, too— I think they're what he was looking for. And when he didn't find them, I thought—"

"You thought he might come here." Aravis did not look alarmed, exactly, but she did look much more awake than she had done a moment ago.

"Yes." Cor was relieved to see Aravis no longer looked as though she might throw something at him. "Has he?"

"If he has, he's left off the bit where he pulled my room apart." She stood aside a little, that Cor might see the tidy chamber beyond the door. A single candle burned under a glass chimney beside a bed whose covers were slightly rumpled, but certainly not ripped from the mattress. A book and a stack of folded linens were set out on a bench but the trunks that had held these and other accoutrements of travel had not been overturned, nor had cupboards been opened and emptied of their contents.

"And the books," Cor said, "the books are quite safe?"

Aravis did not speak. Instead she first edged cautiously past Cor, into the corridor. She cast a suspicious glance to each side, then ducked back into her room and drew Cor in with her. Closing the door firmly, she tugged a low bench in front of it— insufficient barrier to keep somebody out entirely, it was nevertheless large enough to ensure that none could hope to ease the door open unnoticed.

With these precautions in place, Aravis crossed the room to a tall, narrow door set in the wall. This opened into a slim recess where Cor saw one of Aravis's gowns — but only one. It hung by itself in a space scarcely wide enough to contain it, and seemed to sway a little, as if in a breeze.

Aravis paid the gown no mind but dropped to the floor and reached down— down, below what should have been the floor, her arms seeming to vanish into the stone. She squirmed a bit and made a few sounds of annoyance, but after just a moment or two she came up clutching the cedar chest. Depositing it on the floor, she lifted the lid to reveal the contents of the chest.

Cor's breath went out of him in a little whoosh of relief. All seven books were nestled safe within the chest Aravis held. They were still bound with the leather cord, the little golden bauble winking on one end. Aravis, Cor thought, had done a fine job of hiding them in—

"What is that place, anyhow?" he asked, squinting at the recess in the wall.

"It's an airing cupboard," Aravis stood back to permit Cor's inspection of this contraption. The little nook was more like a chimney than a proper cupboard, a shaft that ran the height of the castle wall. It was just big enough to contain the single gown it held, and on stepping forward to place his hand in the recess, Cor felt a slight breeze caress his skin.

"There are openings along the length of it to the outside. It makes one's clothes fresh for wearing the next day; it's very handy, when gowns have been shut up in a trunk for travelling, as mine have." Aravis knelt on the floor once more and tugged Cor down with her, showing him the gap below the floorline where she had stored the chest; it might once have held a stone, but was now a void perfectly-suited to the storing of a smallish object.

"Queen Susan showed me that it was here when first we arrived," Aravis explained. "She said I might wish to use it for storing my jewellery."

"But you don't have any jewellery," Cor said.

"I know that." The children stood and Aravis looked away from Cor, down at the chest and the books it held, which sat on the bench beside her. "But of course Queen Susan would have no way of knowing that, and I wouldn't have told her for the world; she would only have felt badly to have assumed that I did, and I didn't wish to make her sorry."

"Why should she be sorry?" Cor was perplexed. Aravis pursed her lips, as though debating whether or not to reply. In the end she shook her head.

"You wouldn't understand," she told him. She said it very gently, and not in a mean way at all, but Cor still felt badly snubbed.

"I might!" he protested. "How can you know I wouldn't understand if you won't even tell me?"

Aravis frowned. "It's the same sort of thing as when we were in Tashbaan with Bree and Hwin," she said. "You didn't understand then why I was so sorry that we had to creep along like peasants or— or outlaws; that I couldn't ride in on a litter with slaves and a crier, as a Tarkheena ought. You didn't understand the way it felt for me, so . . . undone. Of course I am not sorry to have left Calormen, to have got away from being married to Ahoshta, but even though you are a prince here and have a home in a castle and a family now, you still can't know what it's like to have had those things all your life —a lovely home, a family, horses and clothes and slaves and jewels— and then not to have them anymore."

Cor was distraught at hearing these revelations. "I . . . I could ask my father to get you jewellery," he ventured, but one look at Aravis's face told him this was quite the wrong thing to say.

"Faugh!" she cried, and stamped a foot on the floor. Cor jumped back a bit, just in case, but Aravis did not move to strike him. Instead she dashed one quick, fierce hand at her eyes, and took a deep, shuddering breath to calm herself.

"It isn't about the jewellery, Cor," she said, her tones gentle now. "Not really. I don't _need_ slaves, parties and diamonds in my hair any more than I _need_ stables full of horses that can race the desert winds. They were lovely things to have, and I loved to have them when I did, but they do not make a worthy exchange for what has been given unto me now, for my own. I am very glad to be here. I love all of this, my new home and new friends and—" she looked at him as she said this, "my new family, too. The northern clothes are strange to me still, but I like them well enough and am grateful to have them. I wouldn't want slaves now even if I could have them, because I have seen how well-off all the servants in Archenland and Narnia are, to choose freely what they do and take pride in their work and the wage they earn. It is a good place I have here; a better place. Your father is a good and just king; his rule is so much finer than that of the Tisroc. I should prefer to be nobody here than a princess in the New Palace in Tashbaan, but that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't remember what it was like . . ." she ducked her head, and ran one hand down the sleeve of the nightrail she wore. "Well. I remember being someone else."

Cor, confused and unhappy because his friend was unhappy, decided that Aravis was right— he really didn't understand what she meant. However, when he confessed as much to her he was surprised to see that, unlike his offer of jewellery, this admission made her smile.

"I know you don't," she said. "That's perfectly all right. I don't expect you to understand because there is really no way you could. It doesn't really matter, anyway. After all, what care I for jewels, when I have a friend who would come flying from his room at such an hour because he expected to find me endangered? If I must have bangles, I can put brass rings on my fingers and sew seashells on my droll northern garb. Kings would give kingdoms to have such a friend as you, and yet I have got you as my friend for nothing more than the cost of a ride across the desert, ten stripes on my back and a bit of foolish finery that I am well enough rid of. Why, I do not need jewels!" she was smiling now, her eyes dancing in the candlelight. "I can wear flowers in my hair, as Queen Lucy does!" and, so saying, she freed the leather cord from the books and wound it around her head so that the lovely golden flower shone against the rich, silvery-black of her hair.

"There," she said, triumphant, "the Archen lily, no less! Could I look any more a northern maid? I should wear it on the hunt tomorrow, don't you think?"

Cor, about to reply a hearty affirmative, paused. He leaned forward a little, stared, and then abruptly straightened up.

"That isn't the Archen lily," he said.

"What?" Aravis tipped her head, caught at the bauble and tried to pull it forward far enough to see it. "Of course it is— look, it has three petals."

In reply to this, Cor dug into the inner pocket of his doublet in which he had placed the seal his father gave him. Drawing the ring forth, he extended his hand so that the signet was cradled in the palm of his hand.

"This is the lily of Archenland," he explained. Aravis, unwinding the cord from her hair, cupped the golden tip in her own palm and the children compared flowers.

They were undeniably different— the Archen Royal seal had the bold central petal flanked by the smaller pair, whereas the flower Aravis held featured three petals of equal size, each extending outward from the centre in three separate directions.

"Might it still be the lily, only rendered differently?" Aravis suggested. "Perhaps it was an ornament that belonged to your mother."

"It could be . . ." Cor frowned at the little golden trinket. "It could have been hers, but I don't think so. I think I've seen it before; I don't believe it was Mother's."

"Then where did it come from? Surely to have used it to bind the books as she did, she must have owned it."

Cor, who did not care to think of his mother as the sort of person who would help herself to anything that didn't belong to her, wanted to believe that what Aravis said was so; it must have been his mother's trinket. Yet the image of the little flower, fixed somewhere to something he had seen quite recently, was strong in his mind; shaking his head, he said he was sure that the cord and its attached ornament had not been the property of the Archen queen.

"But I wonder," he said, a new idea striking him, "if it was even Mother who used it to bind the books. I mean, that's a bit awkward, don't you think? Tying something you write in every day with a bit of cord? Maybe the cord got added after."

"Perhaps by Queen Susan," Aravis suggested. "Might it be that the cord is hers? Is it a Narnian symbol, this flower?" She did not, as well she might have done, ask Cor why he was so bothered by such an unimportant detail as a little moulded flower. She could see it was important to her friend, and to her mind that was reason enough to discuss it.

"Perhaps," Cor allowed, "but I don't think so." He stared at the flower. Where _had_ he seen it? It danced on the very edge of his mind . . . and then, casting a frustrated glance down at his own hand, and the signet ring he held, he remembered.

"Come on." He grabbed a startled Aravis by the hand. "We need to go ask Queen Susan when the cord was put 'round the books."

"What, _now_?" Aravis dug in her heels. "Cor, I am in my _night_ clothes!"

"Yes, well, so will she likely be," Cor said, and pulled harder. "You will be in good company."

"Cor, this is ridiculous. I refuse to listen to you when you sound so much like your brother! Please understand, we _cannot_ go knocking on Queen Susan's door at such an hour."

"There are still plenty of people awake. She may not even be in bed yet; in any event, we _must_. But bring the books along. We can't keep them in your room, in case he comes back. Here," he let go her hand to grab the book that sat beside the stack of folded linens. "Put this in the chest instead. And— have you any others? We need to make it look as right as possible."

Aravis, swallowing any number of highly reasonable objections to this vastly unreasonable plan of action, crossed to a low shelf where several other books were stored. Choosing six more of a size and weight comparable to that of the journals, she passed them to Cor, who cast about for something with which to tie them.

"Here." Aravis, still clearly acting in direct opposition to her better judgment, opened the airing cupboard once more and drew a cord from the bodice of the gown that was hanging there. "This looks about the same— even down to the brass bobs at the end."

Cor thanked her, and used the cord to bind the books. Then he stored the seven mismatched books in the cedar chest, which Aravis closed and slid carefully into the secret niche below her gown.

"Now, here," she took the cord with the flower at the end, and used it to re-lace the bodice of the gown. "Perfectly safe," she decided, stepping back to survey her handiwork. "Why, it looks for all the world like it belongs there!"

Cor, examining it as well, was forced to agree that it did look exactly like. The gown, which Aravis intended to wear for the hunt on the morrow, was a study in rich browns and deep golds. The bodice was of softest brown leather, tooled all over with the emblem of the Archen lily and detailed in gold thread. The usurping cord looked, if anything, even better suited to the outfit than the original cord had done.

"Now," Cor said, catching the books under his arm, "we need to find Queen Susan." And Aravis, who trusted her friend even more than she loved the Narnian Queen's high opinion of her, said oh, all right, and let him pull her from the room.

O0O0O0O

A lesser woman than Queen Susan might have been justifiably irritated to find two children pounding on her door at such an hour. A lesser woman than the Queen of Narnia, understandably wearied by a day filled with planning every minute detail for the refreshment of the hunt and the feast thereafter, might at least have politely requested that the children return to bother her at an hour better suited to being bothered— but not Queen Susan. On opening her door (she was at least not yet in her night clothes) to find Cor and Aravis facing her, seven books held between them, she simply asked in what way she could be of service.

"You aren't ill, are you?" she added, concerned, and the children were quick to assure her that they were not.

"We only had a question to ask," Cor said, and Aravis, the soul of tact, did not debate her friend's choice of the plural pronoun. "We are sorry, but it's quite urgent— the cord that was bound 'round my mother's books, did you put that there yourself, or was it there when Father gave them to you?"

"I—" Susan looked surprised. "Goodness, do you know, I am not sure I can even remember. It's been eight years, now, after all, but . . . do you know, it wasn't either of those. Why, it was Corin who put it there." Susan's eyes lit and her expression softened at the memory. "He kept a little cache of treasures he had found . . . he would pick up anything he found on the ground. His rule, as he explained it to me, was that it had to be on the ground or else it was not truly lost or abandoned, although I suspect he broke that rule once or twice. Mostly he took pins and trinkets the nurses and maids dropped in the nursery, but I think there were times he must have found something a bit father afield. The cord was from his little collection, and he used it to tie the books together for me."

"Thank you," Cor nodded. "Thank you; I'm sorry that we bothered you, Queen Susan. It was just very important to know." Then, remembering just in time to sketch a very quick bow, he took Aravis's hand in his once more and pulled her down the hallway again.

Aravis tolerated this indignity only until they were out of view of Queen Susan's door. Then she skidded to a dead stop, shook her hand free of Cor's grip and told him That Was That.

"I am not going anywhere else with you," she said, "until you tell me what is going on."

Cor fidgeted. "I'm still not entirely sure," he said. "That's the problem. I sort of have half an idea, but I can't be sure of all of it. We have to go back to my room and ask Corin about the cord, and then I might know."

"Yes, all right, we can do that if you insist, only please tell me _why_. Why are you so certain that the cord has anything to do with anything at all?"

Cor's fidgets increased to something more like spasms. "That's just it; I can't be _certain_ until I've talked to Corin. Once I ask him, if he tells me where I think he found it, then I'll know. Look, Aravis, please— you came all the way across the desert with me. Can't you just come three corridors over to our room so I can ask Corin about it? Then I'll tell you everything you want to know no matter whether it turns out I'm right or not."

Aravis scowled fiercely, but in the end the promise was enough to sway her. She followed Cor those three corridors over, to a room that was still every bit as pulled apart as it had been when Cor left it. Corin's feather tick, however, was now wholly on the ground, and small snores could be heard emanating from the complex tangle of linens thereon.

"Corin!" Cor set the books down and crossed to shake his brother. "Corin, wake up. Wake up just a moment, I have to ask you something."

Corin did not wake easily. It took, in the end, the combined efforts of Cor, Aravis and a small quantity of the chilled contents of the washbasin to rouse the prince sufficiently for Cor to ask his question.

"Eight years ago," he said, speaking with careful, clear directness (and some difficulty, owing to the sore lip he now had, having been a half second too slow to dodge Corin's retaliatory punch) "you gave Queen Susan a cord to tie around Mother's books."

"Did I?" Corin rubbed his sore knuckles thoughtfully. "I don't really remember."

"She said that you kept it in a treasure cache," Aravis, standing a safe distance away from the prince's makeshift bed and right hook, volunteered. "She said you used to find things and keep them."

"Why yes," Corin brightened at this memory, "so I did. I had forgotten that. That's how I got my first dagger, you know; I found one lying under a bench in the courtyard, and just picked it up neat as you please. It was a fine piece, too, but Queen Susan took it from me when she saw it; she took all the best bits of the collection, really," he reflected, morose now. "I mean, her own brooch, I suppose that was fair, and she always was a little queer about me using knives and such. She still doesn't like to see me with a sword. But I don't think she needed to take even _half_ of what she did . . . say, you don't suppose she still has any of it, do you? I mean, now that I am older and all, maybe she would let me have some of it back, d'you think?"

"If you wish to debate the possibility of Queen Susan returning her brooch to you," Aravis said shortly, "you may do so in the morning. For now, will you please just tell your brother where you found the leather cord with the little gold flower on the end?"

"Oh!" Corin was surprised. "Oh, that. I'd have found that before the fever, I expect; before Queen Susan came. I don't remember so much about before the fever, though. Just bits. That's why I forgot about you, you know," he added apologetically, and Cor, who had long since gotten over being forgotten, said that was quite all right, only _please_, did Corin really not remember the cord?

"I do, come to think of it," Corin said thoughtfully. "I remember because it took me an age to work it loose. It was stuck in the stonework on the inside of the door— _our_ door, you know. That is, the nursery door. I was awfully glad to get it free, and I popped it straight into the box. Fancy me remembering that, after all those years! Why d'you want to know?" he wondered, but Cor simply assured Corin that he would tell him everything in the morning, and so on the strength of that promise Corin promptly dropped back to sleep.

"Now will you tell me what this is all about?" Aravis hissed, and Cor nodded.

"Yes," he said, and scooped the books up to his chest once more. "Come with me, and help me hide these, and I will tell you _exactly_ what this is all about."

O0O0O0O

When the Narnian sun leaped up from the Eastern sea the next morning, eager to begin its joyous ascent to the highest point in the sky, there was one very weary Prince of Archenland and an exceedingly fatigued young lady newly of that same kingdom who were more than a little too tired to appreciate it. Of course, if they had only gotten themselves into bed at a halfway decent hour and slept for something even resembling a proper length of time they wouldn't have been so sleepy the next day, but that is the sort of observation that only a mother is allowed to make and neither of them had a mother on hand to make it, so they simply suffered together for their enterprises of the night before.

"I don't like it," Aravis told Cor over breakfast that morning. She yawned into her sleeve, which somewhat diminished the ferocity of her expression, but Cor was too busy yawning into his hand to even notice.

"I don't need you to like it, Aravis, I only need you to agree to do it. It's the only actual proof we've got and I'm still not entirely certain it counts as proof at all, but since it _is_ all the proof we have, it has to be kept safe. You're the only one I can trust to do that for me."

"Corin could do it, surely."

"Yes he could, and that's why I have already told him all about it, too; so that he can help. He's quite excited about it, of course. But you must see why _you_ have to be a part of it too, don't you?"

"I want to be a part of it, yes, but I would much rather be a part of it _here_, with you."

"Aravis, you love to hunt. You told me so yourself."

"I do love to hunt and I am grateful for the opportunity, but Cor you must know that the chance to hunt means nothing to me next to the chance to stand by you through this." She was scowling at him, annoyed that he could not understand, and Cor squirmed.

"I know that," he said, and had the grace to look at least a little apologetic. "But I hope you can understand that this . . . I just think this is something that I need to do myself. I don't want to push you out of it entirely, I don't mean it like that at all, but I just have this feeling that this part of it all—" his yawn was so wide he thought for a moment it must split his head in two— "is a part I'll need to do on my own."

"So what if he decides to kidnap you again, only this time he leaves off the whole running-down-to-the-coast bit, and just drowns you in the Winding Arrow so that you can't tell anybody what he did? What then?"

"Well," said Cor, "then you have everything you need to go right to Father and tell him about it all."

He didn't see her hand fly out; he only felt it as it caught him on the side of the head, forcing him to drop the chunk of bread he had just taken hold of to clap his hand to his stinging cheek and yelp.

"Ow! _Aravis_!"

"It's not _funny_, Cor!" she leaned in across the space between them, her eyes blazing. "If you are right —and I do believe you are— then this is somebody who has already committed treason by kidnapping the King's son. It doesn't _get_ much worse than that. Should you confront him alone, he may well believe he has nothing to lose."

Cor shook his head.

"If he knows Father at all —and Mother's journals suggest that he knows Father just about as well as anybody can— then he'll know that what he did in the past won't matter to Father nearly as much as what he does today."

"What if he decides to risk it anyway?"

"Then, again, you can take the proof to Father, and— Aravis!" dodging her furious hand just in time to keep her from boxing his ears again. "Aravis, stop it, I only meant it as a joke anyway."

"Well stop joking, then! Cor, I don't know what's gotten in to you!"

"Nor do I," Cor admitted.

It was certainly true that he felt strange today; he had begun to feel a bit different the night before, when the business with the flower was finally made clear to him, and then on waking up the next morning he found that the changes had not departed. If anything, they seemed to have settled into his bones. He felt like a brand new person in a way he couldn't really describe. Certainly the old version of himself was still very much in evidence within him, but who he had been even the day before was not the whole of him, anymore.

It was, he thought, as though the rich satisfaction of having something come suddenly sharp and inescapably clear in his mind the night before, not just once —knowing that nothing else in the world mattered so much as that he reach Aravis's room before anybody else had the chance to— but twice —finally seeing and understanding, all on his own, what the cord and the flower meant— seemed to have effected a sort of change within him. He was tired, yes, and he wished very much there had been about four more hours in the night for him to spend in deep slumber, but beneath his fatigue hummed a bright, sharp, clear sort of readiness.

Aravis could worry, if she liked (she was probably quite right to do so, a small, sensible part of his brain reminded him, and he agreed that this was true). But as for Cor, he could not bring himself to worry. He was quite beyond concern this morning, and he tucked into a plate of kippers with a relish he had not known himself equal to displaying— at least, not when it came to kippers. But Narnian kippers seemed a much different sort of kipper than those found in Calormen, and Cor enjoyed them with abandoned delight as Aravis, morose, picked at her food until the breakfast hour was understood to have more or less ended, and those who would be joining the hunt were invited to make their way to the stable yard.

"I've got to go in another direction," Cor explained to Aravis. "I'll need to look sharp about it, too, so that it isn't noticed I've gone off in another direction. You'll stick close to Corin, won't you? Otherwise I'm afraid he might make a sort of production out of sticking close to you— he's actually very keen on this while conspiracy thing. It's a bit unsettling."

"Is it really, now?" Aravis asked tersely, and Cor flinched.

"Aravis, if I didn't honestly think this was the best way, you know I'd never ask this of you."

"Oh, of course! And that's quite all right, too, as long as _you_ know that if you weren't a prince, and weren't some day going to be my king, I would never in a hundred years let you get away with making me do this." She stormed out of the hall, leaving Cor, greatly stung, to stand by the table on his own.

Was he, he wondered, being unfair? He knew of course that Aravis was more than capable of playing a full role in the situation he was working to engineer. That was the problem; Aravis was always more than capable, and Cor was never sure he was even a little capable. This was the first thing he had ever planned that he was quite sure would come off, one way or another, and for some reason he felt the need to cling to that alone, and not risk it being trampled under the equally capable feet of others who could so easily assist him. So he had sent Aravis and Corin away, and yet now, standing in the feast-hall alone . . . he began to feel he had made a mistake.

Not a mistake because he couldn't handle it; that, he was still quite sure, he could do. But a mistake because he had managed to push away somebody who cared enough about him that she wanted to help, and only agreed to leave him alone because he insisted, and he was going to be her king one day— a pretty poor reason, he thought, to leave somebody alone (I may tell you that he also tried very hard not to think about the fact that he would be Aravis's king one day, because quarrels or not, he didn't ever want to stop being her friend).

He hesitated for a very long moment, torn over the problem of how to tell her he had changed his mind . . . and then he remembered what she had said to him as she pulled him back to find Queen Susan the other day, about it being the truly feeble people who changed their mind and were too embarrassed to say so because they wanted to save face. So that was how Cor came to find himself running along the corridors of Cair Paravel, making straight for the stable yard, where he caught up with Aravis just as she was about to step up onto the mounting block.

"Don't," he said, and then remembered to add "please."

Aravis paused, surprised, but did not take her foot from the stirrup. Cor flushed.

"I'm sorry, I was a proper fool. Come with me? Please?"

At this confession Aravis smiled; a real, wide, genuine smile, such as she did not often bestow upon anyone. She did not take her foot from the stirrup, though; instead she swung onto the back of her borrowed mare, set her feet firmly in place and then shook her head gently at her friend.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you very much; for changing your mind, and for being brave enough to tell me. I _do_ understand, though. I was thinking about it on the way out here, and I think you're right. I think this might be something that is meant for you to do yourself. But," and she looked at him with such frank appreciation that Cor felt a little embarrassed by it, "thank you for that, all the same."

Then she turned her horse so that they, along with the rest of the hunt party, were facing the main gate. Cor spotted Corin mounted not too far away, and the younger prince, in turn spotting his brother, was quick to smile and wave. Cor found himself smiling back, and then, as the horn was sounded and the party moved out, the crown prince backed unobtrusively through the edges of the crowd, into the castle once more.

O0O0O0O

Cor did not immediately seek out his goal. First, he waited. He walked as he waited, taking a leisurely and more than slightly circuitous route around the ground floor of Cair Paravel, watching his feet strike the flagstones, studying the tapestries on the walls, and just generally admiring the place.

Only once he felt a proper amount of time had passed did he at last mount the stairs to the wing that housed Aravis's bedroom. He strolled down the corridor past the archway that led to the Royal apartments, rounded two corners and found himself in front of Aravis's door. Unlike the night before, when he had knocked on it so vigorously, today the door was slightly ajar. From within came the sounds of thuds, rustles and thumps. Cor, listening to these, could envision quite clearly the process that caused them. Ripping the sheets from the feather tick, upending chests and benches, scattering clothing, pulling open the wardrobe . . . at last he judged the person inside was at more or less the right spot in the room, and so laid his hand on the door, pushing it all the way in.

For a moment, the frantic searcher did not realise he was observed. Cor, content to wait, simply watched until the man happened to turn, in the act of casting an undergarment of some sort to the floor, and saw him standing there.

It was almost comical, really; the intruder standing, half-turned, staring at Cor in open shock. Aravis's . . . well, Cor wasn't really sure what it was, but a long, filmy white thing was tangled around the fellow's fingers, and it didn't seem to want to come off. Cor watched for another moment, then at last broke the silence by saying, ever so politely, "I'm sorry, I'm not sure we've ever actually been introduced, but . . . I believe we ran into each other last night."

For this, he saw, was the man with whom he had collided so very near to Aravis's door.

"I also believe," he admitted, "that I know your name. It's Lord Dorian, isn't it? You live on an estate beside the Winding Arrow." He took a step into the room. "Your fields are full of trillium." He took another step in. "Your seal is in the shape of a trillium flower."

The effect this seemingly innocent observation had on the man was impressive. He went, in one moment, from a state of frozen shock to sneering, leering and belligerent.

"And what if it is?" he demanded. "What do you know of my seal?"

Cor shrugged. He looked a little apologetic. "Not very much, I'm afraid. My father is teaching me a little, but I think it will take a while before I am anywhere close to being as well-versed in the seals as he. Why, do you know he says that he has only to look at a seal, and he will know it as well as he knows any man's face? I think that's something a bit special, don't you?"

Lord Dorian did not seem overawed by this feat.

"What do you want, your highness?" he demanded. Cor, studying him, saw fear, uncertainty and agitation all vying for top position in the fellow's mind. Uncertainty was almost certainly born of not knowing just how much Cor himself knew of the plot, and fear was of course a product of the belief that Cor knew everything— or at least, enough to see the man imprisoned. Agitation . . . well, who could fear such a thing without getting a bit agitated about it, too?

"I suppose," said Cor, "that I want to know if my mother could do the same thing as Father can: look at a seal and know it, on sight, as the property of a particular man." He fixed his gaze on Lord Dorian. "I wonder if maybe you hadn't already noticed Mother looking at you a bit closely throughout the whole thing, after I was taken. I wonder if maybe you didn't guess that she suspected you, and that all she would need to prove you were a traitor would be one golden flower on a leather cord— a cord _you_ caught on the doorframe of the nursery, the night you sneaked in to steal me."

"Those are dangerous accusations, your highness," Lord Dorian looked pretty dangerous himself as he said so. "Prince or not, child or not, I hope you know that you can't expect to get away with making charges like that without proof."

"I know it as well as my mother knew it," Cor said. He realised, to his surprise, that he actually felt marvellously calm about all of this. Indeed, his head had never felt clearer; his heart was thumping just a little louder than usual, but it seemed to help him focus all the more. "I have it, you know; your seal on the cord that my brother found in our nursery, where you left it. Of course, Mother never got to see it or else she'd have told Father right away. She knew that she couldn't speak out against you without proof. Was that because you and my father are such close friends?"

"That's right," Lord Dorian seemed to catch sight of a possible out for himself. "She didn't dare speak out because your father and I have been friends since we were boys together. She knew he'd never believe her if she told him I had stolen their son."

"I think he might have believed her," Cor said.

Dorian laughed. It wasn't a nice laugh

"You think, do you? Well let me tell you, if you're thinking he will take your word on this tale of yours —and I'm not saying it's true— over mine? You're a simpleton. No, you had better understand right now that it will only ever be your word against mine. If you _do_ choose to speak out —and believe me, boy, I do _not_ advise it— then who do you expect King Lune will believe? His boyhood friend, or the brat who's only just come home to him from some wretched foreign Empire whose people tried to murder our families and imprison the Narnian queen? Who do you expect your father will most readily trust, the man who grew up and fought beside him, or a whelp who keeps company with filthy Calormenes and grew up consorting with the same brigands who tried to kill us all? You may share his blood but he doesn't know you from a man on the street, and if you ask me he has reason to trust you even less."

They do say that if you let a man go on long enough, he will eventually talk himself into a tangle from which there is no escape. I wish I could say that Cor had acquired sufficient self-confidence to simply let this end come about, but I am afraid that Lord Dorian was playing up all of Cor's sorest points. He may have known it, he may have not, but he had struck at one of the boy's deepest fears— the fact that his father, who barely knew him, had very little reason to place any trust in the prince at all.

A kingdom, Cor had thought, was a very grand and terrible thing to be put in charge of, and he had harboured for some time the terrible, sneaking suspicion that King Lune was only going to turn it over to him because of what the law said about first-born sons. After all, for all that Cor was the king's flesh and blood, they were little more than new-met acquaintances, and indeed who in his right mind would trust a new-met acquaintance over the friend he had known since his childhood?

A heavy, cold thing seemed to wrap around Cor's heart. The very faintest shadow of his despair must have shown on his face, because Dorian went from sneering to positively smug.

"There you are, now," he approved. "Now, why don't you just tell me what you and the little Calormene chit have done with my seal, and I will take what's mine. Then we need never speak of this again, eh? Save you a bit of embarrassment, I think."

"My lord is too kind."

The new voice startled both Dorian and Cor; however, it only scared Dorian. Cor swung around to stare up into the pale, angry face of Queen Susan, who had been standing just out of sight for quite some time, listening to the exchange carried on within. She had at last stepped around the doorframe and into clear view, coming into Aravis's room to stand just behind Cor. Cor thought he had never seen anything as lovely or as terrible as the still, calm fury on the face of the Narnian Queen.

"My lord," she repeated, "is too kind, but I fear he labours under a grave misapprehension. An accusation of great weight has been made against you, Sir, and you have yet to respond to it in any manner that I would deem even remotely satisfactory. Prince Cor may not know it, being yet a stranger in his homeland, but you and I know it full well— once the accusation has been levied against you, the law demands you respond. You may also consider yourself warned," and there was something particularly awful in the cool, clipped way she said this, "that I do not consider the responses you have made thus far becoming of a knight, a gentleman, or a guest of this house." Then she folded her arms across her chest, leaving Cor to stare at her and think that she was just about the most wonderful thing in the world.

"Your Majesty," Lord Dorian scowled, "is misled by the boy's youth. Queen Susan forgets that the boy has grown up amidst liars and thieves and cowards of the worst sort."

"And yet ere his highness found himself in such disagreeable company, he was born into a court that apparently sheltered within its midst one of the most foul and cowardly traitors that ever there was. For a man to accept a spy's purse and steal a babe from his mother makes any number of petty Calormene deficiencies pale in comparison."

"Petty! Can you have forgotten that atrocities the Calormenes sought to commit against _your_ Royal person? They tried to abduct you, Madam, to steal you away and make you into a—"

"My lord Dorian will keep to the point at hand, or he may find himself burdened with a far greater problem than the one that he faces even now." Susan's face was utterly devoid of expression. "Or did my lord not know that the High King himself forbade any mention of the topic you seek unwisely now to raise?"

Dorian muttered something about maybe having heard some such of that sort. Susan, impassive as a marble statue, stood quite still.

"Queen Susan?" Cor ventured to ask a question. "Queen Susan, did you mean it when you said he must respond?"

"I did. The charges against my lord, are, I think, grievous enough to warrant the immediate opening of an investigation. Of course," she rested a hand, light and warm, on Cor's shoulder, "it would seem that an investigation has already been quite ably begun, but I think, given my lord's evident penchant for levelling accusations against the character of his investigators, it might do well to make this a more _public_ study than it has been to date."

Cor looked up at Susan with a sort of speechless awe and wonder that made that lady suddenly smile down at him.

"My dear," she murmured, "did you truly believe the foul things he said? That your father could ever doubt the word of the son he loves? He knows you are true and loyal. He knows these things at least as well as the dear little maid who is your companion —she who boasts of you to all who will listen— and your brother, who thinks you a worthy kinsman indeed." The hand on his shoulder was the sweetest thing he had ever felt; her smile was like pure sunshine. This, Cor decided, was truly the next best thing to hearing these words from his own mother— hearing them from the lady who had loved her.

"Art a boy thy mother would have been proud to know," Queen Susan murmured. "Art a boy whose word thy father does, and will, hold in very high regard indeed."

Queen Susan said this in such a way that Cor could not doubt it was so. Unfortunately she said it in such a way that Lord Dorian also could not doubt it was so; seeing his fate effectively sealed by the word of the Prince to King Lune, the man gave an angry, panicked snarl and darted forward, straight at the pair who blocked his way out.

It was an imprudent move, whatever its motivation may have been; the man's hands closed cruelly, however briefly, on the arms of both Prince and Queen. I do not know if he meant only to push them aside, or if perhaps he meant to use one or both to effect his escape from the castle, but it hardly matters now since at seeing him approach Cor gave a shout and Susan screamed, and the reaction to that shout and scream came almost as soon as the fellow laid hands on them, in the form of a very broad, tall and angry man who stepped smartly around the corner in much the same fashion that Susan had done not long ago— although Susan had not followed her entrance with a sharp uppercut to Lord Dorian's jaw, whereas King Peter most certainly did.

"Ow," said the King, having felled the man, and studied his hand. Queen Susan, looking first at the fallen traitor and then at her brother, frowned.

"If you _will_ insist on striking people," she said tartly, "you must accept the consequences of that action— goodness, Peter, did you need to hit him _quite_ so hard?"

"You're welcome, of course," Peter said courteously. "And for pity's sake, Susan, if you didn't ask me to stay behind from the hunt in order to tackle the fellow if he rushed the pair of you, then why in the world _did_ you?"

"To open the investigation, of course. Peter we've a castle full of guards who could have done that just as well as you— really, look, he's out cold! _Now_ how are we supposed to question him?"

"We'll wait, I suppose." Peter, still wringing his smarting hand, looked pretty cheerful nonetheless. "Maybe have a bite to eat . . . take a walk 'round the castle . . . you'd like that, right, Cor?" he grinned down at the rather flabbergast Prince, who was still trying to work out the details of all that had just taken place. "A little walk around the castle? Her Majesty and I will promise not to bore you unduly with talk of laws and treaties and such. In fact, perhaps you might be so good as to share with us your own account of the story of what happened this summer past when you and the Tarkheena escaped across the desert. You see, we have only heard of it through others yet, and do you know, I have a mind to hear the thing told right. Lots of chases in it, I suppose? Sword fights, conspiracy, all the lovely stuff that makes a tale worth telling?"

Cor found his tongue long enough to say well, yes, he supposed there were most of those things, indeed.

"Capital!" Peter's hand balanced Susan's by landing on Cor's other shoulder. "We'll get the guards in here, we'll have this mess tidied up . . . and we'll have a proper story while we wait for the hunt to return."

And, as it usually proved to be, when King Peter said a thing, that was exactly the way it was.

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There is little of that morning left to be shared. You may wish to know, I suppose, that unlike on the day before, the hunt party returned merry, boisterous and wildly victorious. They had brought down a hart as well as three partridges, and were singing a noisy, off-key song as they made their re-entrance to the stable yard, celebrating their good fortunate and anticipating the fine feast they would have that night.

On hand to greet them, sharing smiles all around, were many members of the castle staff. Also on hand to welcome back the hunting party were King Peter, Queen Susan and, wearing the widest grin of all, Prince Cor of Archenland, who felt confident that no matter how fine and exciting a story his brother and friend might have to tell, he had one that would prove more than a match for it.

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**A.N.:** Only one more chapter yet to go! There are whys and wherefores yet to be shared, you see.

Hearty congratulations are due to rthstewart, who is the only reader to have mentioned her suspicion that the seals were somehow significant to the plot. There is no prize for being right about it, but I am happy for her all the same!

We are now moved in, and I am surrounded by mountains of boxes. I am almost certain that my dog is in or under one of these, but I am in no hurry to find him because I doubt he is greatly pleased with me just now. Indeed, he is rather steamed.

Trusting in the more temperate nature of my readers, I would like to hear your thoughts on this chapter and the piece as a whole thus far as I work on updating _Kingdoms Come_, composing the final chapter of this story, and, of course, as I wait for my dog to simmer down and forgive me. If I never update again, you will know he was lurking behind a tower of kitchen utensils as I typed this, and pushed them over on me just after the chapter went live.

We will hope that this is not the case.


	5. Dénouement

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V

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It took, rather understandably, some time to sort out everything that had happened while the hunt was on. It was Queen Susan's firmly-stated intention that none of the news of what had happened be immediately shared in the general company of the hunting party, and so she, King Peter and Cor contrived to cut King Lune, Queen Lucy and King Edmund from the group, that they might explain matters in greater privacy.

Of course this meant that Corin, spotting these efforts, at once concluded that Something Exciting had happened, and so he laid hold of Aravis's arm and hustled her out of the courtyard with his father and brother the Narnian monarchs. Cor, who had expected nothing less, was quick to take up for his friend and his brother when Queen Susan appeared reluctant to include them in the smaller party.

"It concerns them as well, you know," he pointed out, and Queen Susan was far too fair-minded to contradict this, so at last she said she supposed it would be all right (though she did look very worried as she said it) and everyone retreated to the library, where a guard was posted at the door and given strict instructions not to permit anyone to enter until further notice.

"Well?" Corin burst out, once the door was shut. "Did you get him? Who was it, anyhow?"

So bit by bit the story came out, with Cor, unable to look directly at his father, murmuring the most pertinent parts as fast as he could and then allowing Susan to take over.

"I was . . . intrigued," she said carefully, "by the behaviour of the children last night. Then I saw Cor had stayed behind from the hunt, so I thought perhaps I had better stay close to him."

"She asked me to stay close to her," Peter finished, "and so we were both on hand when . . . well, when it happened."

"And it was really Dorian?" Corin leaned so far forward in his seat that he nearly toppled to the floor. "It was actually _Lord_ Dorian, who tore our room all apart, and took you away? Well!" he shook his head. "_I_ wouldn't have guessed it. Isn't that something?"

"It is something, to be sure," King Lune said quietly, and Corin realised, however belatedly, that perhaps such unabashed enthusiasm might be out of place at this time.

"Oh— er— hem," he said, and struggled to appear apologetic. It was a valiant effort, but doomed from the start. Fortunately Queen Lucy drew focus from the squirming boy by asking the next question.

"Where is he now? Surely he is not still in Aravis's chamber."

"No," Cor shook his head, "he's not."

"He was removed to the gaol," King Peter put in, "once he regained consciousness." And he started to look pleased with himself, but thought better of it when Susan caught his eye.

"Did you really knock him down, then?" Corin asked. "I mean, knock him right out?"

"I did," said Peter, and then, at catching another look from Susan, hastily added, "but of course there was no need of that. There are guards for that sort of thing, and— and my temper, and— er— precipitous actions on my part, which . . . dash it all, Susan," plaintively, "I _said_ I was sorry!"

Susan allowed that he had, indeed, and she begged his pardon for her tardiness in forgiving him. "He certainly did behave in a provoking fashion," she reflected. There was something in her face that was equal parts anger, pity and sorrow. "Though I still cannot support you having done so, I understand why you felt the need to act as you did."

"But what I don't see," Edmund said, frowning, "is why Dorian felt the need to act as he did. I mean, why did he steal into the Princes' room like that? How was it that he came to be in Aravis's room today when Cor found him?"

"Well, he'd have been looking for the seal, wouldn't he?" Corin said. "His seal that I found in our nursery when I was little; the one Queen Susan took from me so she could bind the books." He might then even have dared to scowl at her, had Queen Susan not looked at him in such a simple, silent way as to cause the prince to duck his head and say, "er, that is, the seal that I gave to her to use to bind them."

Susan smiled.

"Yes," Cor nodded, "he was looking for his seal. I suppose when first he missed it he must have thought that Mother had found it; from what I gather, he actually thought she was far more certain in her own mind of his guilt than she really was. He thought she was only waiting for the right moment to tell Father, but then of course she— well, she died, and he must have thought himself safe."

"He was in her room, though," Queen Susan said, surprising them all. As one, they turned to look at her. "Queen Lora's room, that is. After . . . everything. On the day you gave me the books, Cousin," she nodded to King Lune, "you sent word for me to meet you in her Majesty's chamber. You remember?"

Lune nodded. His answer was pitched very low. "I remember."

"When I got there, he was already inside. I didn't know who he was at the time, of course; I didn't even know he had no business being there. You must remember I had only been Queen for a little more than a year, and had very little understanding of the way a castle is run. It seems foolish of me, now, but I didn't think it strange to find a nobleman in the Queen's room. He simply excused himself and I thought nothing of it— I saw him many times over the years that followed, of course, given how generous our Cousin has been in opening his home to us, but even long after the point where I would have known to challenge him had I found him in a lady's chamber, I never thought to ask him what he had been doing that day. Of course, he must have been searching for the seal he had lost, even then." Queen Susan's expression was now almost wholly one of pity. "The poor man must have suffered terribly in his mind all these years, never knowing for sure what had become of it, or if at any moment he might be found out."

Everyone was too polite to tell Queen Susan that they couldn't quite bring themselves to share her sympathy for the prisoner, but it is unlikely she would have been surprised to learn it; Queen Susan had spent many years feeling sympathy for those whom most deemed wholly unsympathetic, and she had by that point grown accustomed to it.

"Then we came to Narnia, and Aravis and I started asking questions." Cor was careful not to look at Aravis as he said this— he worried she would insist on accepting blame for asking the questions so publicly, and he didn't want that. "It must have spooked him to think that somebody might find him out after all this time. Of course he had no way of knowing if we even had the seal or not, but he must have thought he had reason to worry. Then when we all put our names to the hunt list Father and I spent a long time talking about the seals. It seems he was in the room and close enough to overhear just a little of what we were saying, and he misunderstood, and assumed . . ."

"Guilty conscience makes for an uneasy spirit, what?" Edmund said.

"Something like that, I suppose," Cor nodded. "So that's why he tossed our room —Corin's and mine— and why he went to Aravis's room too, though I thought at first he was looking for the books. I don't think he even knew the books existed; he just wanted to find his seal."

"And where _is_ his seal?" Lucy asked. "You have it, do you, Cor?"

"No," Cor shook his head, "not I." Then he looked to Aravis, who forbore to actually unlace the thing from the bodice of her hunt gown, but did lift the golden bob at the end of the leather cord so that they might see.

"Oh how clever!" Lucy applauded. "I don't imagine anyone would have thought to look for it there; and just as well, too," she added, suddenly very grave, "for he does not seem to be the sort of person who would scruple to injure anyone who stood in his way."

"But— look here," Edmund said, "I still don't see _why_. I certainly agree with Lucy, he doesn't seem to be the type of fellow to stick at much, but _why_ did he steal Cor? The obvious explanation doesn't seem to make much sense; that is, if he took Cor because he was in the pay of the Tisroc, why would he keep silent for so long? Play the part, and all that, and never try to make an escape into Calormen or anything like?"

"He wasn't in the pay of the Tisroc, though," Peter corrected. "He was in the pay of that ex-Chancellor fellow; the one from the sea-battle. Bar, was it?"

"Lord Bar, yes," Lune said quietly.

"So he didn't much care about the Tisroc one way or another, then?" Corin wanted to know. "I mean, there won't be another Calormene army coming for us now we've locked him away, or anything, will there?"

"I should be surprised if there were," Peter said. Corin looked disappointed— but only a very little.

"And there's no doubt of this?" Edmund asked. "No question of him being in Lord Bar's pay, that is— we're quite certain?"

"Quite," Susan said. The way her mouth shaped the word was especially decisive.

"No, no, I know there's no doubt he's behaved abominably _here_, in Narnia," Edmund said. "I mean, there's no doubt he was willingly employed by Lord Bar? We're quite settled in our minds as to why he took Cor? There can be no question of his covering for another, acting under coercion . . . no chance that there is a wife or daughter locked away in a tower somewhere to ensure his obedience, or any of that sort of thing?"

"He has no children," Lune said. "He has no wife. There is no family at all. He did have a brother, once, but he is gone now."

"And there's really no question of his acting unwillingly, I'm afraid," Peter added. "He said— er— quite a few things as he was taken away. Most of them were awfully imprudent things to say in my hearing, too, given that I'll probably request a hand in arranging for his trial— with our Royal Cousin's permission, of course," he added, and inclined his head to King Lune.

"'Tis not my place to give permission, but rather to yield to Narnia what she is justly owed," King Lune said. His face was so grave and sad, so very unlike Cor had grown accustomed to seeing it, that it rather frightened the Prince. "By your account, King Peter, and by the testimony of her Majesty and my own son, this man has, in your home, committed acts of trespass and violence against the property and person of Narnian monarchs. What ally would I be, did I not yield to you the right of his judgment?"

At this speech Queen Lucy left her own chair and dropped to the feet of King Lune. "While our dear friend's sense of justice doubtless makes us proud to know him," she said, "our love of him demands we point out that a father wronged and a friend betrayed might surely expect some compassion and look for leniency of law and tradition from those he calls his allies. Dear, dear friend," she placed her little hand over his, "I cannot imagine what a sore trial this is for you, to learn of your friend's treason. I know my family is to kind to speak on that point, but I am so selfish in my love for your household, for your people who have shared with us in every manner of victory and loss, that I cannot hope to restrain myself. If your Majesty would see this man removed to Archenland to face whatever fate you believe he best deserves, I cannot think that any of us would presume to stop you."

This would have seemed a reckless and presumptuous thing for a Queen say in almost any situation, but when it was said by Lucy it somehow meant something else. Narnia's younger Queen knelt at the feet of a friend and ally in a posture not unlike that of a daughter and her parent. Lune, for his part, looked on Lucy and smiled, resting his free hand on that tiny one which covered his.

"Dear, dear friend," he echoed. "What sort of ally would ever ask for such a thing? Leniency contrary to the law? No manner of man or king that I would care to be could ask for such favours. No, he is ours to judge together, and by and by we will do as we must. I trust that King Edmund will serve in his usual capacity?" he glanced over to that man, who inclined his head in confirmation. "Then as I trust that King Edmund can fairly judge the man who committed such acts against Narnia, so too do I ask for his faith in my own ability to act as his impartial partner at the bench. I will offer any vow he asks as to my refusal to be swayed toward leniency of judgment for love of my friend, or toward a harsher verdict for love of my son."

"I would not be much of a judge of character," said King Edmund, "if I thought it necessary to ask for such a vow."

During this exchange Cor had begun to watch Aravis closely. Although she did tend to grow quiet in larger groups like this, he was unaccustomed to seeing her go for quite so long without saying anything at all. She hadn't even really _moved_, except to display the seal she wore. She didn't look upset, exactly, but she looked somehow very drawn in. Her hands in her lap were just a little too still, her expression just a little too calm and her entire posture just a bit too decorous for Cor to believe that she was doing very well with any of this.

"And where are the books now?" Queen Susan asked. "Were they yet in Aravis's room as he searched?"

"Oh, no," Cor shook his head. "We put them away somewhere else. I still wasn't certain he didn't know of them, you see, and so I wanted to be safe. We hid them— well, your Majesty, if you'd look behind you . . ."

Susan turned her head, and found herself staring at the library shelves. She frowned for a moment before her expression cleared; she put out her hand and took down, from between a weighty tome on the four hundred year history of the Aspen family that was rooted in the south-western banks and a slim pamphlet on the proper care and feeding of ermine, one of the seven leather-bound books.

"And the others?" she asked, to which query Cor replied by pointing out six different spots in the library where he and Aravis had concealed the books the night before, when he had still believed that Dorian might know of their existence. Lucy and Corin got up at once and went about gathering these; as they did, Susan begged that they would excuse her from the remainder of the discussion.

"I am not easy in my mind," she explained, "that our every guest has been cast adrift immediately on returning from their sport. There are matters of refreshment to be seen to, and so . . ." with an exquisite gesture of apology she got to her feet and made her way to the door, only to be arrested in her journey by Aravis's voice.

"If you would allow me, Queen Susan," the girl said, "I should like very much to assist you in whatever way you most require."

Queen Susan looked surprised by this offer, but she smiled and nodded and extended her hand to her little guest, who was quick to leap from her seat, run across the room and take it. Then both of them departed, leaving Cor to wish that he might somehow chase after them and demand to know if Aravis was all right— without, of course, actually chasing after and asking her.

"I suppose we should at least take a stab at planning this trial, then," Peter sighed. "I can't say I expect it to be any sort of pleasant business, but it will need to be done . . . who shall stand as accuser, then? Cor seems the obvious choice, being as he is included in pretty well all that Dorian has done against any of us, but maybe I ought to stand as well, given that it's Narnian land . . . what say you, Brother?"

Edmund looked thoughtful. He studied Cor a moment, and then looked askance at Lucy. She, understanding the silent question, pulled her mouth into a little moue of doubt.

"Susan does not care to accuse," she reminded him.

"Yes, but we must all do things we do not much like, from time to time," Edmund pointed out.

"This is certainly true, but you know perfectly well that I am not fit to be asked about things as intricate as the right of wrong of a person's position as court accuser! I can only tell you whether or not the proposed accuser would care to stand as such, and if the person's cousin held some secret and terrible grudge against the accused." She looked plaintively from one Narnian king to the other. "Good my brothers, I can tell you exactly how many tenants my lord Dorian will leave without a land-lord by his crimes. I can tell you their names and the stories of their lives and anything you might care to know of them as _people_, but as to the diplomatic propriety of who should best serve as accuser of an Archenlandish subject . . . Edmund, I don't know why you would believe that _I_, of _all_ people—"

"All right, Lucy! Very well, yes, all right!" Edmund, laughing, held up a hand. "I am sorry to have even considered placing you in such a position. I beg your pardon and will not be so thoughtless as to ask again." He shook his head, and smiled at Cor. "What say you, your Highness?" he asked. "You have been nominated to stand as accuser; perhaps you should have some say in who, if anyone, might best stand beside you."

"I— well," said Cor, "I don't know what an accuser is, or does. Is it as it sounds?" He looked for guidance from his father.

"The accuser," Lune explained, "is the party who stands before the court to name the charges against the accused. The reason art nominated is because thou hast been dealt the cruellest hand by the work of Lord Dorian. He also came at thee here, in Narnia, with violent intent, and so art the best candidate. However, these good Kings have it in mind that perhaps it might be fitting to have a second beside thee, and so they put to thee the question of which person thou wouldst choose."

"Oh," said Cor, "Oh, I . . . I'm not sure." He looked around at everyone still there, and saw that even though he had admitted he was not sure, they still expected him to come up with an answer. "Well . . ." he struggled to see who might best fit the position. Queen Susan did seem the most suitable choice, being as she had been as nearly attacked as he, but Queen Lucy had said her sister hated to accuse and so Cor was loathe to ask it of her— especially as he was certain she would oblige in spite of her own distaste for the practice. King Peter, then, seemed the next best choice, as it was his house and his sister, but somehow that didn't quite fit either, that the host should accuse the guest. King Edmund and King Lune were to be judges and so could not accuse either. Cor would dearly have loved to have Aravis stand beside him, but she had scarcely been wronged at all (Cor did not imagine one could be an accuser solely on the slim strength of one's borrowed room having been pulled apart) and so . . .

"I should like it," he said at last, "if Corin would oblige by standing with me."

"What?" said Corin, and nearly toppled from where he was perched on the arm of his chair.

"Indeed?" Edmund said forward. He did not look disappointed or disapproving; only intrigued. "You may of course refuse to answer, but I hope you will indulge my curiosity— why Corin?"

"Well," said Cor, reminding himself not to sound apologetic for his choice, "it all affected him too, didn't it? When I was taken, there were all sorts of things that changed for him. He was going to be king when it wasn't a sure thing that I was even alive, and then when he came to Tashbaan there was all that confusion with me, and now, here, he's had his room destroyed and . . . well, Queen Susan was almost attacked too, and I know he thinks very highly of her, so that's his brother _and_ his friend whom Dorian . . . came at. I just felt he fit as well as anyone else I might name."

Edmund nodded, turning this explanation over in his mind as though testing the weight and merit of it. What he heard certainly seemed to satisfy him; at least, he smiled broadly at Cor and nodded.

"Very neat," he approved. "I think you are quite right. A fine young diplomat in the making, isn't he, Cousin?" he smiled at King Lune.

"He is, at that," the Archen King agreed. "And now if our very good hosts and hostess have no further need of us, I hope I might excuse myself and my sons. I should like to confer with them."

"Do not trouble to excuse yourself, Cousin," Lucy said. "You may make free use of the library for as long as you have need of it. I believe my brothers would like to retire to discuss their respective tales of victory this morn, and as for me," this said with a laugh, "I think I will need a proper wash before I am fit for company!"

It was, Cor thought, a particular gift of Queen Lucy to cross all conventional bounds of propriety without causing even the slightest offence.

The young Queen continued to smile as she tugged King Edmund to his feet (King Peter managed to rise before she could lay hold of his sleeve) and all three urged the little family from Archenland to make free use of the library. Only once the Narnians had departed, shutting the door fast behind them, did King Lune turn to face his sons. He extended his hands to them, palms upward, in a wordless gesture of contrition, but Cor spoke before his father could.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I am _so_ sorry, Father. I didn't want it to be somebody you loved; I didn't even want it to be anyone at all. I so very badly wanted to be wrong, but Mother seemed so _certain_. Aravis said it herself, and I had her read me all the bits to do with my kidnapping and I agreed with her. I would not have looked for him if I truly believed Mother could have been wrong . . . but I didn't believe that she would write of her suspicions if she had not been quite settled in her own mind as to the truth of them."

King Lune smiled a very little. It was impossible to say if he smiled at the earnest apology of his son, the memory of his wife, or even a bit of both.

"No," he said, "no, she would not have. Thou art correct. She was an extraordinarily careful woman, thy mother. She did not even trust the household accounts to our steward, and the poor fellow had to work very hard to take no offence. She was enamoured of detail . . . it was in fact she who uncovered Lord Bar's embezzlement in the first place. She said that the totals in certain of the accounts only appeared to add up; that in fact, they should not do. I could not understand what she meant; I thought that either they did, or they didn't, and no two ways about it. But she showed me how the right answer could be achieved with the wrong input, and in the end we traced the problem back to Lord Bar. It was not a taxing piece of detective work, admittedly, as only the Lord Chancellor could have managed the thing as neatly as he did, and only Lora could have picked it out as she did . . . but I do not blush to admit that we rather enjoyed the hunt while it lasted." He looked a little wistful, then, as though remembering the thrill of playing detective with his wife.

"Did he try to fight you when you confronted him, Father?" Corin asked hopefully, and King Lune laughed.

"Ever bloodthirsty, my boy! No, he did not. He was the soul of courtesy and contrition; he pleaded a weak and wicked nature and he resigned his own post at once— and quite right, too. But had we grasped the truth of what he said when he spoke of his wickedness . . . well. I think it best we did not know, then, or else we would have dealt with him much differently, and perhaps wondered evermore if we had been too harsh in our judgment of him. At least this way we _know_."

"But this way Cor had to be kidnapped," Corin reminded his father.

"That is true," the king agreed, "and I regret those years we lost, yet I do not believe the theft of that time would ever have been permitted had it not been a certainty that we would be granted at least as many years more. And see, now! We have a new little lady in our house because of it, and a staunch ally she has been to us already, eh? These things may cause us pain for a time, but the joy that springs on us come the dawn is a more than fitting recompense. Or at least," he smiled on the matched faces of his children (the elder with a slightly swollen lip and blacked eye given him by the younger) "this has been my own experience."

Only time would prove that it was the experience of the Princes, too.

O0O0O0O

The trial of Lord Dorian for crimes against the Royal houses of Archenland and Narnia was scheduled to occur after lunch and before dinner, which meant that it was only sparsely attended due to everyone's need to sleep off their lunch and ready themselves for that night's dinner. This also means that there is little remaining in the way of record of the event, but the eyewitness accounts and court documents all seem to be in agreement on the most pertinent points.

A number of solemnly-surprised Archenlandish courtiers were present, as were a handful of Narnians, both Beasts and men. Lord Dorian, now looking very grim and sullen, stood before the seats of King Lune and King Edmund and was closely attended by two solemn guards, one a Narnian Faun, the other an Archenlandish outrider who had accompanied the party north for the hunt. Prince Cor of Archenland stood as accuser, and his brother stood at his side. The Kings who sat as judges called the accusers to name the charges they brought against the prisoner, and so Cor and Corin spoke in turn.

Cor named his grievances as the theft of his Royal person (Queen Susan had worked with him to help get the wording just right) the years in his homeland that had been denied him, the intrusion against the privacy of his room and the assault on his person when he had confronted the accused.

Corin then named his own charges, these being the kidnap of his brother, several stressful years' worth of expectation of inheritance (Queen Lucy had persuaded him that "scaring me to death, making me think I would have to be King!" was perhaps not quite appropriate for such a setting as the court) and the assault on the person of she who had given up much of her own time to the task of raising him, their hostess the Queen Susan.

When these charges had been named, Lord Dorian was invited to defend himself against them. He didn't make a very good job of it, I'm afraid. Instead, he said a lot of things that were of course taken down for the court record, but I do not think any of us would benefit from their being reprinted here. If you truly care to hear a lot of foul and unimaginative insults against the good Kings and Queens of Narnia, the Princes of Archenland and the Lady Aravis, then I am afraid you must obtain the court records for yourself and read them there; they really would not better the tone of this chronicle.

King Lune, I will tell you, was not immediately insulted. Instead Lord Dorian appealed to him on basis of their long friendship, entreating his childhood companion to show mercy. King Lune was very quiet for a minute after this plea, and when he answered, his tones were soft and terrible to hear.

"Your mistake, milord," said the King of Archenland, "is not in crying mercy of I who love you. Your error does not stem even from your efforts this day to cover that crime which you committed against my house. Rather, you miscalculate in reminding me of that childhood we shared." He sat a little taller in his seat. "Yours was never a merciful nature, Dorian. Your brother was tender almost to a fault, covering your every transgression out of the goodness of his heart and his love for you, but you were commonly a stranger to pity, and so I marvel at your audacity to ask it now of me. In any event, I am but half your judge. The other half sits here beside me, and of King Edmund you can claim no long acquaintance."

There then fell over the chamber a most painful silence, because of course everyone remembered that the only thing Lord Dorian could claim of King Edmund was the questionable privilege of having laid violent hands on that man's sister just moments before King Peter had knocked him out.

King Peter barely bothered not to appear satisfied at the memory.

"Therefore if milord has no further defence of himself to present," King Edmund said, "my cousin and I will confer."

It was not a lengthy conference. Naturally the two Kings had come prepared to learn new things and hear a defence that might sway them to acquit— it would be a sorry sort of ruler who made up his own mind what the verdict would be even before he went in to preside over trial. Had Lord Dorian insisted that witnesses be produced, had he even claimed innocence, the trial would have gone on long enough to produce witnesses and investigate his claims. But he had only cursed his accusers and failed to deny the charges; nothing that had been said was new or shocking to either king, and certainly none of it was reason to acquit. The verdict, therefore, was that Dorian was guilty of all of which he stood accused, and Cor ached to hear his father say so.

"King Edmund has entrusted the Archen throne with the matter of sentencing," King Lune went on, "but we will not further dampen the joy of our shared company by passing sentence now. My lord will remain incarcerated in the gaol of Cair Paravel, and will make the journey home with us at the conclusion of our stay. Once we are again home at Anvard we will pass sentence. Until that time, we are done with you." He then nodded to the guards, who removed the prisoner with all speed.

With these unpleasant formalities completed, Cor looked for the chance to at last get near to Aravis and ask her privately what had been troubling her in the library. However he found that she was flanked by the Queens Susan and Lucy, all three ladies engaged in conversation, and Cor was pretty certain, on observing this, that he wouldn't be able to get her alone. Then he was distracted by Corin's enthusing that the whole thing had gone much better than he'd expected ("I didn't _really_ believe he was the type to draw a sword on us all and make a bid for escape, and of course they'd have disarmed him before trial anyway, but I'll confess I was rather hoping he would at least put up a bit of resistance— though this way was satisfactory enough, I suppose") and by the approach of his father, who all at once looked very old.

"Bearing up well, my boy?" the king asked.

"Well enough, I think," Cor said, and then, emboldened, asked "and— what about you, Father? Are you quite all right?"

"Not a bit of it, I'm afraid," King Lune sighed. He nodded to the door. "Wouldst thou walk with me, boys?"

Naturally Cor said that he would. Corin expressed a preference for other amusements, though, and King Lune said that was quite all right, so just Cor and his father removed themselves from the room. The corridor beyond the door was wide and empty; King Lune set a leisurely pace as he walked it with his son.

"Hast seen thy first trial," he reflected. "Not one I would have had thee see, 'tis true, and yet . . . perhaps it is as well that the first hast seen was such a painful one. I should hope there will never be an easy verdict."

"Really?" Cor puzzled this over. "But wouldn't it be better if the verdict were an easy one?"

"Nay. For an easy verdict smacks of sloppy justice, and I would not see thee made an unjust judge. The verdict that is wrestled with, agonised over and spoken with a great weight settled across one's shoulders is the most even-handed such that can be spoken. It is no less than any prisoner deserves— the torment of his judge in the quest for that most just and perfect ruling."

"But what if I make a mistake?" Cor asked. "I mean, what if I do all as you have said, only the decision I make and the verdict I name is the wrong one?" He shuddered at the thought. "Father, what if I condemn a man for something he did not do?"

Lune rested a hand on his son's shoulder as they walked. "Why thinkest thou," he murmured, "that the gaol in our home is of such a size?" He smiled a little sadly. "It was designed according to the instruction of a wise and just king who knew that he would need to make much room for every possible mistake."

"And will Lord Dorian be locked in the gaol, then?" Cor asked. "For a very long time?"

Lune looked ahead to the end of the corridor.

"There is no doubt," he said, "that Dorian did that of which he has been convicted."

Cor squirmed. "I know. But . . . well, what of his brother, then? Didn't you say that he was always merciful? Wouldn't he appreciate it if we didn't —well— that is, if maybe Lord Dorian were only to be locked away?"

"Sir Dor is dead," Lune said. It was an ungentle thing to say and Cor felt the heavy finality of the words bite into his chest. "Dead, or lost, or gone, and better off for it."

Cor was confused. "You mean you don't know?"

"I mean it was a very messy and ugly thing, the sea-battle. A lot of men were lost over the side . . . we didn't feel honour-bound to search for them, I am afraid. I was too distraught at losing thee."

"You mean— he died in the battle fought over _me_? Sir Dor was one of the men in Lord Bar's pay?"

"He was one of the men on Lord Bar's ship. I could not fathom at the time why he would throw his lot in with such a man— he was not like that in the least. But it occurs to me now that he may have had it in mind to reverse the worst of his brother's treachery without having to actually betray Dorian. Of course," Lune sighed, "it did not come off like that, in the end . . . but I have always clung in my mind to the fancy that thy survival might be owed to him." He stopped walking to look down at Cor. "Now, having thee restored unto us, I have to this day learned nothing that would dissuade me from that belief. Indeed, the story that was told to me of thy rescue from the boat only strengthened it."

"You mean you think _he_ was the knight to whom I was given? The one who starved himself to save me?"

"It is exactly like his nature," Lune nodded. "No man who would stoop to stealing a child could be the sort who would sacrifice his own life for that child's sake— and yet, the sort of man who could not bear to betray his brother, but who would do all he could to protect the child his brother stole . . . yes. Sir Dor was such a man. He erred always on the side of mercy." King Lune's hand on Cor's shoulder was a warm weight of trust to which that boy was desperate to live up. "I would see thee, my boy, become such a judge."

Cor nodded. "So would I," he said.

The two walked on in silence.

O0O0O0O

The hunt feast that night was a noisy and joyous affair. The day's bounty was roasting on the great fires of the feast hall, so that in amongst the woodsy, smoky smells and the scents of all the Beasts and people gathered together, you could also catch a whiff of the most wonderful aroma of supper, too.

The musicians played riotous songs all through the meal, and I am sure that your most disapproving auntie would never have condoned the sort of behaviour that was indulged in, for people got up all through the meal to sing and dance as the mood took them. They wandered around greeting friends and telling the sort of jokes and stories that are only ever told once you have gotten enough wine into you— and even then, are the sort of tales and jokes that can never be told to your mother.

"What's this song, then?" Cor asked of his brother, seeing that Corin appeared to be well-versed in the lyrics of the tune. He had to pitch his voice loudly to be heard over the twang of strings, the whistle of the pipes and the throaty chorus of the feasters— it seemed that the whole hall knew the words.

"It's a poaching song!" Corin shouted back. "Used to be sung by all the Beasts and Fauns and such that would steal game from the Witch, and then when the Winter ended they kept singing it. King Peter liked the pace of it so much that he's kept the tradition up and we sing it on nearly every hunt— though of course it can't really be called poaching if the King's in on it, now, can it?"

Cor found he couldn't be bothered by such petty logistics— it really was a marvellous, merry song. He could understand King Peter wanting to sing it every time they had a successful hunt. He could also understand Queen Lucy wanting to spring up from her seat, as she was doing now, and seize her sister's hands in hers, pulling a blushing Queen Susan into the midst of the party she had arranged that she might join in the stamping, swaying and clapping dance. He was especially grateful to her for doing this because it left an empty seat beside Aravis, into which he slid with all possible speed.

"Look here," he said with a boldness that felt alarmingly, _wonderfully_ foreign to him, "what was bothering you up there? Back in the library you were all stiff and still, and even in court you were too. Did somebody do or say something to upset you? Did _I_?"

Aravis, after blinking at the surprise of being so suddenly addressed, began to smile. She shook her head.

"No," she said, "oh no. Nothing like that. It was only that I wondered —well, I feared— that perhaps you were sorry to have . . . not to have lost the time with your father, as of course you would be sorry for that, but rather you were _so_ sorry for it that you might even wish . . ." she squirmed in a way that Cor thought very unlike her. At last it came bursting from her— "I was frightened to think you might be sorry to have found _me_. Not," quickly, "that you'd ever mean it that way, only I was stupid and scared and I just kept thinking that you would even give up the chance to have saved Bree and Hwin and me, if it meant that you could have gotten back that time you lost." Then she fell silent and faced him almost defiantly, as though daring him to scorn her.

He didn't scorn her, exactly— but I am afraid he did laugh.

"Cor!" Aravis cried, wounded, and Cor tried to stop.

"Sorry," he said, and laughed more. "Oh, sorry, I _am_ sorry, but— it's just silly of you. You're acting like _me_, Aravis— don't you see? It's exactly the sort of thing I would think, only you thought it instead . . . maybe because I've not been thinking very much like myself lately, it makes sense that you would instead. But you needn't worry. It was just eight years, after all. I can give up eight years easily enough, I think, if it means that I have you and Bree and Hwin for my friends. After all, it's not as though we won't all be getting plenty years more, right?"

Aravis, thoroughly warmed and cheered by these words, said that she supposed he was right. "And of course," she added, "I was foolish to think that you couldn't understand what it meant to me to lose what I had. You may have lost it much longer ago, but you did lose something all the same. I was foolish to think, too, that you might prefer not to have lost it for the sake of what you gained— for, you see, I am glad to have lost all that I had in order to gain a home such as I have now in Archenland."

"Oh, yes," Cor said, "about that— I almost forgot. I need that," he nodded toward the seal that dangled from her bodice.

"Yes, of course," Aravis murmured, and popped the seal free of its cord, passing it back to Cor. "I expect it reverts to the crown, now, does it? The seal and . . . everything. His property and tenants and all of that."

"Well yes," said Cor, "but only for a moment." Then he took her hand in his, and pressed the seal back into her palm. "Now it all comes to you."

Aravis sat, dumbstruck, and looked from her hand to Cor, back to her hand, then back to Cor again.

"To . . . me?"

"Yes," Cor nodded. "I asked Father, you see, what was to be done with it all, and he said a steward was in charge of the property but a land-lord would need to be appointed over the steward. He suggested that I might do it myself, in order to pick up the trick of running a property, but I said I wasn't sure that would be very fair to the tenants. I said that maybe they'd do better with somebody who'd had a bit of experience with that sort of thing, but who could teach me, too. I asked if he could give the land to you. He said if you had my recommendation that was good enough for him, and so it's yours, now. All of it."

He looked down the table to where King Lune sat beside King Peter, the two men conferring over some joke or other. "Of course, we hope you will still make your home in the castle —well, _I_ hope you will— but if you'd rather not, you could live in the manor there. I know that maybe you might have changed your mind about us being all right to live with, and if you have then you can leave now, if you like, but I do hope you'll stay." He flushed a little to make the admission. "The property is very close, you see, so you may always ride out to oversee it when you like —oh, and there are lots of horses, apparently; I made sure to ask Father, and he said Dorian's stables are first-rate— but of course if you would prefer to just move out—"

He had to stop talking then, because that was when she hugged him. Aravis, who always sat so perfectly and held herself in exquisite check, flew right off the bench, flung her arms around Cor's neck and tackled him with a hug. She said he was forbidden to make another mention of her leaving; she said he was her truest friend and she would not dream of moving out of the castle until she was forced from it. She also said a few other things too, but that was because she'd had rather a lot of wine that night. Thankfully she and Cor would both forget them come the next morning, and so I think it best overall that I not relate them here.

O0O0O0O

There remains only one part of this tale left to tell. It is the story of a cool, grey autumn dawn on the southern border of Archenland. Those who bore witness to this part of the story were King Lune, Prince Cor, Prince Corin, the Hermit of the Southern March and the Lady Aravis— newly taken possession of properties at which she declined to live, but which none doubted she would oversee with all the care and attention of the very best land-lady. All of these had gathered to witness the exile of Lord Dorian from Archenland— for such had been the sentence that King Lune had passed. Now they stood facing Dorian, and although Corin was secretly hoping the fellow would make a desperate try for the sword King Lune wore, he did not attempt it.

"Dorian, formerly of Archenland," said King Lune, "for the crimes you have committed against this kingdom and her allies, you and any heirs you may produce are henceforth banished beyond our borders. While in the pay of a man who served our enemy you betrayed the trust of your regent and your friend. You have chosen your master; therefore cast yourself upon the mercy of the desert and, should you survive to reach Tashbaan, seek the favour of he who governed the master you chose. Our friend," he indicated the hermit, "will keep a watch to ensure you do not return."

Then he fell silent and they watched as Dorian turned and started down the hill, toward the blistering heat of the desert and the fate that none could doubt awaited him therein. Before he was quite out of sight, however, Cor broke rank, running down over the hill. He caught up with the exiled nobleman and seemed, as near as the onlookers could tell, to extend something to him. Dorian made as though to refuse it but Cor extended his hand again, and this time the fellow accepted. Then he turned and continued on, and Cor watched him go a minute before he returned to his family.

"What was that all about, then?" Corin wanted to know.

"I made him a map," Cor said. "Last night. I drew him a map of the desert— of how to get safely to Tashbaan." He looked to the girl who stood beside him. "Aravis helped."

"Oh," said Corin, nonplussed. Their father smiled down at his elder son.

"Erring on the side of mercy, eh?" he asked gently.

Cor stared straight ahead so that the reflection of the rising sun upon the desert scorched his eyes. He lifted his chin a little higher to meet the coming dawn.

"Always."

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** And so we are at the end! If anybody wants to hear the song that inspired the idea of the Narnian poaching song, Heather Dale's "The Poachers" from her CD _The Green Knight_ is the culprit. I have ever-so-slightly rewritten the lyrics in my mind to make it fit into Narnia, but you don't really need to know the reworked version in order to enjoy it. It is a lively tune and I can easily see it being a favourite of Corin!

Thank you so much to all who have read and taken the time to leave feedback. Your thoughts and insights are dearly treasured and greatly appreciated. The final chapter of _Kingdoms Come_ will go up sometime in the next week or so, and after that . . . new horizons loom, new stories are being written, and yes, I will own to some excitement over that!


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